Something I've noticed when we start to talk about/debate the ending, people inevitably bring up the vaccine. Since the surgery wasn't completed, we're left to speculate if the surgery would have been successful or not, and more importantly, if a vaccine would have helped in the first place/how much it would have helped/ what would have happened afterwards.

I thought I'd open up a topic for you all to discuss your thoughts on the topic.

I, personally, initially was more inclined to agree with the "the world is too f-ed up now, a vaccine would'nt help" camp. However, after playing through again, I came to realize that, uh, Tess and Sam and (Riley) would have TOTALLY appreciated a vaccine, guys. Imagine how differently the game would have gone if Tess and Sam had lived, as they would have if they had access to a vaccine (they both died of minor wounds that became infected.) I mean, yeah, a vaccine wouldn't be some magical panacea that would bring everything back to normal, but to be SO SURE that it wouldn't help AT ALL is a bit of a stretch (and something we can't be sure of anyway.) Just because you can't solve all problems at once doesn't mean it's not worth it, you know? A vaccine would also at least quell the infected from adding others to their ranks. Quarantine zones could be less strict without the risk of people becoming infected, they would just have to guard the place properly. What makes life suck so much in the QZ's is because even one spore getting in can wipe out the whole place, so people have very little freedom for fear of them coming back infected (that's the whole point of "quarantine".)

Overall, I think the whole "a vaccine wouldn't make a difference," argument is just trying to justify what Joel, and by extension we, did in the hospital. It's really tempting to want to feel like you "did the right thing," but the game makes it clear time and time again that Joel is no hero. I don't think the game is really asking us to feel that what Joel did was just, but to accept it.

Yeah, I agree. What made the ending somehwat touching (in addition to all the other complicated feels) to me was that Joel didn't do the "right" thing, but he did the human thing. I believe he was basically fighting for his life, figuratively and literally, in that hospital. He couldn't have gone on without her. He had nothing else to really live for. And he had to go through hell, and eventually lie to her to get her back.

I honestly think he didn't even consider the whole vaccine thing, it wasn't even on his radar. I mean, Joel's life up to that point had just been loss after loss, and attempts at detaching himself from those losses, but I really think that losing Ellie would have killed him. Like, he would have been suicidal, or would have at least stopped caring for himself. But to reduce the gravity of his decision, in that it possibly cost humanity a vaccine (a source of much-needed hope, at the least), and that he was righteous in his actions, is, to me, a misinterpretation of the ending, but one I've been seeing a lot.

I can't pull up a direct quote or anything now, but something that's stuck with me is that Naughty Dog said something along the lines of "this is not just another zombie game (and by that, I don't mean the infected are not zombies - that's not the point), but it's really a game about Joel and Ellie's growing father-daughter relationship".

I bring that up because to me, the game was never about doing the right thing or making sure the world gets a cure, it's about Joel and Ellie's story.

My stance on the ending has always been that Joel was selfish and in the wrong, from the "big picture" point of view. The ending did not come as a surprise to me, and I don't really know where people get the idea that Joel is a hero that should have "done the right thing" - to quote Tess, they're "shitty people, and it's been that way for a long time now". I never saw Joel as the good guy, and when the ending came around, I didn't expect him to let Ellie go. That would have been uncharacteristic of him. As you said, Joel is no hero.

In the big picture, yes, a vaccine would have been great and it would have been a huge step for mankind, but in the context of The Last of Us and the perspective the game was meant to be viewed in, whether or not the vaccine would make a difference, and even the well-being of the world's remaining population doesn't even matter, because the focus is mainly on Joel and Ellie's relationship.

Nerakil wrote:I can't pull up a direct quote or anything now, but something that's stuck with me is that Naughty Dog said something along the lines of "this is not just another zombie game (and by that, I don't mean the infected are not zombies - that's not the point), but it's really a game about Joel and Ellie's growing father-daughter relationship".

I bring that up because to me, the game was never about doing the right thing or making sure the world gets a cure, it's about Joel and Ellie's story.

My stance on the ending has always been that Joel was selfish and in the wrong, from the "big picture" point of view. The ending did not come as a surprise to me, and I don't really know where people get the idea that Joel is a hero that should have "done the right thing" - to quote Tess, they're "shitty people, and it's been that way for a long time now". I never saw Joel as the good guy, and when the ending came around, I didn't expect him to let Ellie go. That would have been uncharacteristic of him. As you said, Joel is no hero.

In the big picture, yes, a vaccine would have been great and it would have been a huge step for mankind, but in the context of The Last of Us and the perspective the game was meant to be viewed in, whether or not the vaccine would make a difference, and even the well-being of the world's remaining population doesn't even matter, because the focus is mainly on Joel and Ellie's relationship.

That's my take on it, anyway.

I think you wree trying to quote this:

Druckman said,

"As for the whole ending...I've heard you talk about how some plot points are cliched, and the one that probably bugs us the most is Ellie being immune. And the only reason that's in there is so you could get that choice in the end. There's this progression of character for Joel, and how far is he willing to go for Ellie? It progresses from like, willing to put his life on the line, willing to put his friends on the line, and eventualy he's willing to put his soul on the line, and he's willing to sacrifice all of humanity. And at the end you could argue that last conversation, HE'S EVEN WILLING TO PUT HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH ELLIE ON THE LINE. IN ORDER TO PROTECT HER."

I think this is all self-explanatory but I like explaining hehe so here goes.

He was saying that the game was never about the fungus nor about Ellie being immune. That is not the story they are trying to tell. They are trying to tell the story of Joel and Ellie and how their relationship has developed from indifference to love. It doesn't matter what you or I think Joel should have done. Some of you would have sacrificed Ellie while some wouldn't. It doesn't matter. What matters is what Joel did and why. What Ellie would have done and why.

Joel saved Ellie because he doesn't want to lose another daughter.....oh, and he loves her. (<---that's just how I read Joel's actions :D)

Ellie (if she was asked) would have been torn by making the decision to sacrifice herself and be with Joel. It was actually good storytelling on ND's part that Ellie was unconsious. The decision was then left to Marlene and Joel. Both representing Ellie's desire to help humanity and trying to be a normal kid. It doesn't matter who prevailed. Ellie would have been willing to make a vaccine anyway.

There should be no debate here. According to ND, he haven't heard any single parent disagree with Joel's decision. Non-parents were 50/50 about agreeing with Joel. This means that if you were exactly in Joel's position, you wouldn't have done it any other way.

Sorry for going off topic lol. I'll go back to the vaccine debate part if it will actually help or not. YES! Ofcourse it will help. Society won't go back to the way it was but it will definitely help.

Joel saving Ellie was selfish. He didn't want to lose another loved one, especially after going to hell and back. And while it is abundantly clear Joel is very much the antihero (I mean, massacring an entire hospital, even unarmed doctors, to get what he wanted? Not something a bonafide hero would do.) I think the story also makes clear that it was actually Joel who needed and depended on Ellie more than the reverse, which Joel would have us believe. Joel is a very broken, hollow man hardened by the environment he lives in and the losses he suffered. Ellie, in a way, became his guiding light. Losing Ellie would have absolutely destroyed him: his will to carry on, his humanity, his sanity - her death would be the end of him. He was not only saving her life, but his as well.

And while Marlene was selfless in that she gave up her personal love for a girl she considered a second daughter for the greater good, it was also selfish as well. What both Marlene AND Joel failed to do, was give Ellie the choice. They took it in their hands to decide what was best for her, instead of asking what she wanted. Marlene says once, if not twice, that making a vaccine is what Ellie would have wanted. But the thing is - it wasn't like Ellie was in a vegetative state; Marlene COULD have asked her when she came to, instead of rushing her off to surgery. It was ultimately Ellie's choice, and they denied her that.

Personally speaking, I think while a vaccine would have done some good, by stopping the growth of the infected (assuming a vaccine could be made and it worked) the world and its human inhabitants had changed too much for things to ever return to 'normal.' In fact, to alot of people, the life they already lived - quarantine zones, martial law, infected, hunters - was 'normal'. Even the survivors who remembered the days before the outbreak, you would be kidding yourself to think that after 20 years of living and fighting in a hostile environment like this one, that once a vaccine was made, they'd be back to having barbecues and going to the movies. It's just not gonna happen.

It doesn't matter what you or I think Joel should have done. Some of you would have sacrificed Ellie while some wouldn't. It doesn't matter. What matters is what Joel did and why. What Ellie would have done and why.

There should be no debate here. According to ND, he haven't heard any single parent disagree with Joel's decision. Non-parents were 50/50 about agreeing with Joel. This means that if you were exactly in Joel's position, you wouldn't have done it any other way.

Very well said. That's what struck me as so odd, poeple bringing up their perceieved efficacy/lack thereof of a vaccine or villainizing the fireflies to rationalize Joel's decision. I think there's a tendency to want to rationalize what Joel did because we were forced to carry out his decision. I know that I wasn't fully on board with what Joel was doing, through a number of events of the game actually. But maybe that's because I'm a female player and I'm used to detaching myself a little more from the protagonists I play as- I don't see their decisions as "my" decisions. ND didn't give us a choice of what to do, so I think there's that tendency to want to justify it as if it had been our own choice.

And I hadn't heard that bit about parents reactions to Joel's decision. Even though I'm not a parent, it makes sense- and Druckman himself has a daughter of his own.

Personally speaking, I think while a vaccine would have done some good, by stopping the growth of the infected (assuming a vaccine could be made and it worked) the world and its human inhabitants had changed too much for things to ever return to 'normal.' In fact, to alot of people, the life they already lived - quarantine zones, martial law, infected, hunters - was 'normal'. Even the survivors who remembered the days before the outbreak, you would be kidding yourself to think that after 20 years of living and fighting in a hostile environment like this one, that once a vaccine was made, they'd be back to having barbecues and going to the movies. It's just not gonna happen.

Something I've noticed when thinking about this topic is that it seemes like the most damaged, and dangerous, individuals that we meet on our journey are people who were alive before the infection. I think the survivors who remember the "old days" are actually worse off than people like Ellie. It must be such a great burden to wake up every day knowing that the world you now live in is so crappy compared to The Way It Was. Society losing stability like that brings out the worst in people, people like David, for instance. But, look at Ellie. And Sam, and all the friends Ellie had in the Boston QZ. They're pretty much normal, non-psychopathic people, because this is the only world they know, and it's not a big deal to them. Ellie frequently marvels at the beauty of what probably look like hellish landscapes to Joel, because he remembers what they're "supposed" to look like.

Overall, I don't think that their world is necessarily cursed to be populated almost entirely by infected and rapists/murderers forever. Like it's said in the game, hunters don't keep kids around, so they'll eventually die out. I see the hunters as the last of Joel's dying generation- those who fell from the "old" world. This leaves the next generation, of people like Ellie, Sam, and Riley behind. I don't think it could ever return to "normal," because our normal is Joel's normal, and they'll never get that back. But that's not to say that future generations, like Ellie's, wouldn't be able to gradually improve quality of life, to better cope with their circumstances. So, I guess I don't fully believe that society is f-ed beyond repair, but Joel's generation pretty much is, because of the trememdous loss they've had to endure in losing their old lives/loved ones. The sting from that memory is never going to go away.

And while Marlene was selfless in that she gave up her personal love for a girl she considered a second daughter for the greater good, it was also selfish as well. What both Marlene AND Joel failed to do, was give Ellie the choice. They took it in their hands to decide what was best for her, instead of asking what she wanted. Marlene says once, if not twice, that making a vaccine is what Ellie would have wanted. But the thing is - it wasn't like Ellie was in a vegetative state; Marlene COULD have asked her when she came to, instead of rushing her off to surgery. It was ultimately Ellie's choice, and they denied her that.

Before I say my point of view regarding giving Ellie the choice, I would like to clear up the fact that Ellie wanted BOTH to help make the cure and be with Joel.

With that said, I do agree with you that Ellie should have been given the choice, however, I do not think that would be for the better. Have you ever been in the position where you would have to side with one friend/loved one while ultimately crushing another? That is incomparable to what Ellie would experience. Her deal would be "Would you be the salvation of humanity? Or the salvation of the one and only person you truly care about?

If that was the case, I imagine myself cringing the entire scene while Ellie was making the decision. It would be extremely uneasy to watch an innocent looking girl being torn appart by making a decision in which the consequences are of this magnitude.

I said this many times before, even if Marlene got her way it wouldn't matter since Ellie would have been willing to help anyway. But we all know what really happened and most of us didn't like it so we just rationalize what Joel did.

What I ask is to those who think they would have done differently, would you really do what you think would have done given the circumstances? I mean, saying I would have sacrificed her is one thing, actually doing it if you were exactly in his position is another.

It doesn't matter what you or I think Joel should have done. Some of you would have sacrificed Ellie while some wouldn't. It doesn't matter. What matters is what Joel did and why. What Ellie would have done and why.

There should be no debate here. According to ND, he haven't heard any single parent disagree with Joel's decision. Non-parents were 50/50 about agreeing with Joel. This means that if you were exactly in Joel's position, you wouldn't have done it any other way.

Very well said. That's what struck me as so odd, poeple bringing up their perceieved efficacy/lack thereof of a vaccine or villainizing the fireflies to rationalize Joel's decision. I think there's a tendency to want to rationalize what Joel did because we were forced to carry out his decision. I know that I wasn't fully on board with what Joel was doing, through a number of events of the game actually. But maybe that's because I'm a female player and I'm used to detaching myself a little more from the protagonists I play as- I don't see their decisions as "my" decisions. ND didn't give us a choice of what to do, so I think there's that tendency to want to justify it as if it had been our own choice.

And I hadn't heard that bit about parents reactions to Joel's decision. Even though I'm not a parent, it makes sense- and Druckman himself has a daughter of his own.

Here's where I got the quote about parents' reaction to The Last of Us:

But people lets think of want would have happened if they did kill and experiment on her (I already explain this in "Is Ellie contagious Article" if you want to read it) who said if they would be successful. Keep in mnd that it was her body that deflected the fungus how would they make others immune. It was her genetics and everyone has different genetics.

CaPtiAn1590 wrote:But people lets think of want would have happened if they did kill and experiment on her (I already explain this in "Is Ellie contagious Article" if you want to read it) who said if they would be successful. Keep in mnd that it was her body that deflected the fungus how would they make others immune. It was her genetics and everyone has different genetics.

TheGuyThatWasTheGuy wrote:The mutant strain was in her brain, they could scientifically engineer a cure out of the strain maybe with some of her immune system thrown in.

Reading a few other articles though found out that Ellie's mother tried the same thing (or something similar) and died and the result was a failure at getting a cure. So who knows if they would have been successful or not.

TheGuyThatWasTheGuy wrote:The mutant strain was in her brain, they could scientifically engineer a cure out of the strain maybe with some of her immune system thrown in.

Reading a few other articles though found out that Ellie's mother tried the same thing (or something similar) and died and the result was a failure at getting a cure. So who knows if they would have been successful or not.

From where did you get that information??? Because i do believe you are wrong (no offence)

TheGuyThatWasTheGuy wrote:The mutant strain was in her brain, they could scientifically engineer a cure out of the strain maybe with some of her immune system thrown in.

Reading a few other articles though found out that Ellie's mother tried the same thing (or something similar) and died and the result was a failure at getting a cure. So who knows if they would have been successful or not.

Can I have a link for that. I have never heard any of ND's interviews regarding that or in-game. If it's an article by another player I don't think that's reliable as a source to claim that Elie's mother tried the same thing.

And although you may or may not be right wether the Fireflies can extract a vaccine from her, that's not what the story is about so personally I don't concern myself if they can or can't actually do it. It's about how far Joel is going to go to save the one thing he only cares about. But I'm more on the side of that they can actually do it since for me it's too far fetched to actually dwell on the technical side of things about genetics since the game already said it is possible to "reverse engineer a vaccine". I'm going to take their word for it that it is "possible" becuase doig otherwise would ruin a good story.

TheGuyThatWasTheGuy wrote:The mutant strain was in her brain, they could scientifically engineer a cure out of the strain maybe with some of her immune system thrown in.

Reading a few other articles though found out that Ellie's mother tried the same thing (or something similar) and died and the result was a failure at getting a cure. So who knows if they would have been successful or not.

Can I have a link for that. I have never heard any of ND's interviews regarding that or in-game. If it's an article by another player I don't think that's reliable as a source to claim that Elie's mother tried the same thing.

And although you may or may not be right wether the Fireflies can extract a vaccine from her, that's not what the story is about so personally I don't concern myself if they can or can't actually do it. It's about how far Joel is going to go to save the one thing he only cares about. But I'm more on the side of that they can actually do it since for me it's too far fetched to actually dwell on the technical side of things about genetics since the game already said it is possible to "reverse engineer a vaccine". I'm going to take their word for it that it is "possible" becuase doig otherwise would ruin a good story.

That's just me. :D

None of the articles claimed that her mother did nor did I ever say they did, BUT it can be INFERED because how would Ellie suddenly have immunity. It is very possible due to genetics that her mother or father must have been immune as well "genetics 101"; traits are given/passed down from the parent to the offspring. Also hearing recordings within the game itself can give the idea that they tested it but failed but its brief and never mentoned again in the story. This is my theory.

Plus my origianal comment was what would of happened if they killed Ellie and extracted and researched her brain but ended up failing and if they did get a cure how would they be able to use it if most of the world is dead.

TheGuyThatWasTheGuy wrote:The mutant strain was in her brain, they could scientifically engineer a cure out of the strain maybe with some of her immune system thrown in.

Reading a few other articles though found out that Ellie's mother tried the same thing (or something similar) and died and the result was a failure at getting a cure. So who knows if they would have been successful or not.

Can I have a link for that. I have never heard any of ND's interviews regarding that or in-game. If it's an article by another player I don't think that's reliable as a source to claim that Elie's mother tried the same thing.

And although you may or may not be right wether the Fireflies can extract a vaccine from her, that's not what the story is about so personally I don't concern myself if they can or can't actually do it. It's about how far Joel is going to go to save the one thing he only cares about. But I'm more on the side of that they can actually do it since for me it's too far fetched to actually dwell on the technical side of things about genetics since the game already said it is possible to "reverse engineer a vaccine". I'm going to take their word for it that it is "possible" becuase doig otherwise would ruin a good story.

That's just me. :D

None of the articles claimed that her mother did nor did I ever say they did, BUT it can be INFERED because how would Ellie suddenly have immunity. It is very possible due to genetics that her mother or father must have been immune as well "genetics 101"; traits are given/passed down from the parent to the offspring. Also hearing recordings within the game itself can give the idea that they tested it but failed but its brief and never mentoned again in the story. This is my theory.

Well that's just a theory after all.

And yes I agree that it is actually highly possible that her parents could also have the same immunity, however they were only mentioned in-game though, so the best we can do is speculate. It could be true or it could not.

There are actually a few people immune from HIV and it took a decade to create a medicine that could lengthen the incubation of the virus and if I am not mistaken, just recently two people have been cured through bone-marrow transplant of an immune donor (I'm not sure if it's an immune donor or was made synthetically). If this would serve as an example, it could be safe to assume that the Fireflies could EVENTUALLY make a vaccine, or something that could lengthen the incubation period long enough that people will actually die of old age instead. And the key is to finding out what happened to Ellie.

If I may also dwell on the technical side like your claims, you are right that everyone has different genetics, but today it is already possible to replicate genetics to artificial means and apply it on medicine for people with various syndromes.

CaPtiAn1590 wrote:Plus my origianal comment was what would of happened if they killed Ellie and extracted and researched her brain but ended up failing and if they did get a cure how would they be able to use it if most of the world is dead.

If they did get a cure. The Fireflies could use it as leverage to take down the "government". They could actually make the world a better place....for them.

If they actually are the good guys they claim to be, and if they did make the cure it could actually help in the long run. You can't cure a plague overnight. Although I doubt everything will be back to normal with all these hunters and cannibals out there. Atleast the best they could do is start a settlement just like Tommy's, be self-sufficient and be immune and start a new society from there and wait for the rest(hunters) to die out. They "don't keep children around, if you haven't noticed", according to Sam. That's me speculating too far but I do believe that what I just said is possible.

Hmmm.. you know what if they could just take a blood sample of Ellie. If the fungus strains also flow through the body's fluids couldn't they just take a sample of the blood and get a sample to the strain that way.

Plus just out of couriosity; if the doctors were performing surgery on her and they got her blood on them wouldn't they transact the fungus onto them as well infecting the doctors!

CaPtiAn1590 wrote:Hmmm.. you know what if they could just take a blood sample of Ellie. If the fungus strains also flow through the body's fluids couldn't they just take a sample of the blood and get a sample to the strain that way.

Plus just out of couriosity; if the doctors were performing surgery on her and they got her blood on them wouldn't they transact the fungus onto them as well infecting the doctors!

I guess so. But what they probably want (me speculating again :D) is the core, if that's what its called, since the fungus travels through the bloodstream and into the brain until it settles there. It's the fungal lump that happens to grow in the brain just like some parasitic worms in Africa. However, in Ellie's case, the fungus INSIDE HER BRAIN is dormant and that is probably what they want.

About the surgeon being infected, I don't think that's how you get infected. You get infected by inhaling spores or getting it in your bloodstream. So as long as they don't have an open wound (this is what happened to sam) or get bitten, they're good. You can actually find an artifact that explains all this on the first part of the game inside a truck.

CaPtiAn1590 wrote:Hmmm.. you know what if they could just take a blood sample of Ellie. If the fungus strains also flow through the body's fluids couldn't they just take a sample of the blood and get a sample to the strain that way.

Plus just out of couriosity; if the doctors were performing surgery on her and they got her blood on them wouldn't they transact the fungus onto them as well infecting the doctors!

I guess so. But what they probably want (me speculating again :D) is the core, if that's what its called, since the fungus travels through the bloodstream and into the brain until it settles there. It's the fungal lump that happens to grow in the brain just like some parasitic worms in Africa. However, in Ellie's case, the fungus INSIDE HER BRAIN is dormant and that is probably what they want.

About the surgeon being infected, I don't think that's how you get infected. You get infected by inhaling spores or getting it in your bloodstream. So as long as they don't have an open wound (this is what happened to sam) or get bitten, they're good. You can actually find an artifact that explains all this on the first part of the game inside a truck.

Ahhh i see. But i is still logical because that would be a real life senerio.

And about the surgeons if you notice all they wear is a mask and surgeons outfit (and gloves) but alot of their skin is revealed and appears to have cuts and bruises (but could be just texture's in game) if you look closely so there would of had definatly been a problem. LOL

CaPtiAn1590 wrote:Hmmm.. you know what if they could just take a blood sample of Ellie. If the fungus strains also flow through the body's fluids couldn't they just take a sample of the blood and get a sample to the strain that way.

Plus just out of couriosity; if the doctors were performing surgery on her and they got her blood on them wouldn't they transact the fungus onto them as well infecting the doctors!

I guess so. But what they probably want (me speculating again :D) is the core, if that's what its called, since the fungus travels through the bloodstream and into the brain until it settles there. It's the fungal lump that happens to grow in the brain just like some parasitic worms in Africa. However, in Ellie's case, the fungus INSIDE HER BRAIN is dormant and that is probably what they want.

About the surgeon being infected, I don't think that's how you get infected. You get infected by inhaling spores or getting it in your bloodstream. So as long as they don't have an open wound (this is what happened to sam) or get bitten, they're good. You can actually find an artifact that explains all this on the first part of the game inside a truck.

Ahhh i see. But i is still logical because that would be a real life senerio.

And about the surgeons if you notice all they wear is a mask and surgeons outfit (and gloves) but alot of their skin is revealed and appears to have cuts and bruises (but could be just texture's in game) if you look closely so there would of had definatly been a problem. LOL

Their bruises could just be textures too.

Afterall, I think they know what they're doing since they survived this long experimenting on the infected without getting themselves infected too. The recorder in the university said they've been doing this for the past 5 years and sometimes there's progress and sometimes there's none. Too bad the dude got bit by a test monkey and got infected too (in another recorder just outside the last room). Lol

CaPtiAn1590 wrote:Hmmm.. you know what if they could just take a blood sample of Ellie. If the fungus strains also flow through the body's fluids couldn't they just take a sample of the blood and get a sample to the strain that way.

Plus just out of couriosity; if the doctors were performing surgery on her and they got her blood on them wouldn't they transact the fungus onto them as well infecting the doctors!

I guess so. But what they probably want (me speculating again :D) is the core, if that's what its called, since the fungus travels through the bloodstream and into the brain until it settles there. It's the fungal lump that happens to grow in the brain just like some parasitic worms in Africa. However, in Ellie's case, the fungus INSIDE HER BRAIN is dormant and that is probably what they want.

About the surgeon being infected, I don't think that's how you get infected. You get infected by inhaling spores or getting it in your bloodstream. So as long as they don't have an open wound (this is what happened to sam) or get bitten, they're good. You can actually find an artifact that explains all this on the first part of the game inside a truck.

Ahhh i see. But i is still logical because that would be a real life senerio.

And about the surgeons if you notice all they wear is a mask and surgeons outfit (and gloves) but alot of their skin is revealed and appears to have cuts and bruises (but could be just texture's in game) if you look closely so there would of had definatly been a problem. LOL

Their bruises could just be textures too.

Afterall, I think they know what they're doing since they survived this long experimenting on the infected without getting themselves infected too. The recorder in the university said they've been doing this for the past 5 years and sometimes there's progress and sometimes there's none. Too bad the dude got bit by a test monkey and got infected too (in another recorder just outside the last room). Lol

I think the point is that the fireflies clearly hadn't seen anything like what Ellie had in their five year search for a vaccine, since when you wake up to Marlene in the hospital, she excitedly says how "the cordyceps inside of her has somehow mutated- it's why she's immune," in a surprised way, as if they hadn't encountered anything this hopeful yet in their tests for a vaccine. So, I think the fireflies had a pretty good chance of succeeding. There was the sense of "this is what we've been waiting for" to the whole situation. Which just serves to add more gravity to Joel's decision.

And I'm of the opinion that Ellie can't infect people at all, since she seems to carry a mutated, harmless strain of the fungus. The fungus probably has to incubate for a certain amount of time before it can infect others, but in Ellie's case, it obviously wasn't able to get that far.

Her deal would be "Would you be the salvation of humanity? Or the salvation of the one and only person you truly care about?

If that was the case, I imagine myself cringing the entire scene while Ellie was making the decision. It would be extremely uneasy to watch an innocent looking girl being torn appart by making a decision in which the consequences are of this magnitude.

I said this many times before, even if Marlene got her way it wouldn't matter since Ellie would have been willing to help anyway. But we all know what really happened and most of us didn't like it so we just rationalize what Joel did.

What I ask is to those who think they would have done differently, would you really do what you think would have done given the circumstances? I mean, saying I would have sacrificed her is one thing, actually doing it if you were exactly in his position is another.

This is an excellent point. A lot of people get up in arms over the fact that Ellie wasn't given a choice, but, as you point out, that would be almost cruel to put a 14 year old girl in that kind of position. It's kind of a lose-lose situation for her.

And I think that your last point sums up what was really so great, and kind of refreshing, about the ending. So often, since games tend to be power fantasies, to some degree, we get to do what we would *say* we would do, or fantasize about doing, in a difficult situation. We want to think that we'd be able to valianty beat the final boss, save our loved one, or make a great sacrifice to "save the world." But then, that doesn't happen here. Instead, we're deliriously, violently stumbling through a hospital, doing a lot of morally difficult things that we don't all necessarily want to admit we'd *really* do in that situation.

I remember not being fully on board with what Joel was doing, as soon as he shot that guard in the hospital, starting the whole shebang. But my hesitation very quickly wavered. I accepted it all really easily. And it wasn't until I was carrying Ellie down the hallway that I realized that this is what I *really wanted to do all along*, I just wouldn't fully admit it to myself, because my own sense of morality, and I guess years and years of videogames, had taught me that this wasn't what you were supposed to do- you make the sacrifice to save humanity! But Joel made the true, human decision. What we'd *really* do, as opposed to what we'd fantasize about doing.

If Ellie was able to make the conscious decision, do you think she would have gone through with the surgery knowing it meant that she would have to die? Or do you think she wouldn't go through with it? I feel like she wouldn't want to, but would feel obligated to because she feels "survivor's guilt." Perhaps Joel knew she wouldn't want this (especially since Marlene put her through surgery without consenting with her) and "lied" about the Fireflies giving up on finding a cure in order to make Ellie feel better about feeling guilty that she couldn't make a difference. I don't think Joel was completely selfish in his decision to save her. I don't think they would have trekked across the country knowing that it was a death sentence for Ellie. Ellie certainly didn't accept that as her fate, but she did want to help make that vaccine. But at the expense of her life? I think Joel did the right thing and it's what he's been doing throughout the whole game - to protect her and keep her safe. As a parental figure speaking on part of Ellie who was not conscious to make a decision, I think he did the right thing by saving her. Ellie was not aware of what the Fireflies were going to do and I don't think she would have been okay with it. She would have wanted to find alternative ways. She's a survivor and I don't think she would have given up so easily. But the last conversation between Joel and Ellie at the end of the game keeps replaying through my mind. Joel tells her that when it comes to surviving you find things worth fighting for. He knew Ellie was feeling survivor's guilt, but she interrupts him and sternly asks if everything he said about the Fireflies giving up on finding a cure was the truth. It was like.. Ellie didn't want to hear whether or not the guilt would get easier, all she wanted to know was the truth about whether she could have made a difference in the world or not and she asked that in a tone like she would have been willing to give up her life if it was the right thing to do and in a way it would have fulfilled "her turn" since everyone she's been close to has died. But maybe that is just her emotions speaking and ideally she wouldn't want to give up her life. Her guilt could have been the reason behind wanting to give up her life. But Joel was trying to make her realize that it wasn't her fault they died and in this world you do what it takes to survive and dying for this vaccine that may or may not work would just put them both in a worse off position. Once again, Joel knows all about survivor's guilt and maybe he lied to Ellie to help her heal and get over the survivor's guilt a little bit. I don't think Ellie wanted to die for the vaccine even though it sounded like she would have been all for it, but once again.. I think it's the survivor's guilt speaking for her. She badly wanted to help find a vaccine so that her loved ones didn't have to die in vain. Just to clarify, because I'm confused, but did the surgeon say in his recording that there were other immune individuals but attempts to make vaccines with them have failed and that Ellie's case was different? If that's the case, Joel did not completely lie to Ellie. He lied about the Fireflies giving up on finding a vaccine, but if other attempts have failed then there was probably a high chance of Ellie's case failing as well. And where would they have ended up? Ellie dead and Joel alone and sad once again. So in that sense, Joel didn't lie. I don't think Joel's actions were completely selfish like I said. I think maybe he knew that if Ellie was given the choice, maybe she would have felt obligated to go through with it (survivor's guilt) and said yes to the surgery, so after he saved her, he lied to her to make her feel like she had no choice in the matter and it was beyond her control and that even though she wanted to help and make a difference, that it wouldn't have helped. Which, if other attempts did fail, then, it is partially the truth.

Well eventough the vaccine created, nothing could be change almost every people that discussing about this saying the same thing.Well if anyone blamed the father-daughter relationship between Ellie and Joel and blamed it to Joel, thats not fully true. I mean do you guys even heard the voice massage? It said that there are some of the people that are immune to it, so why on earth the fireflies wont make any diffrence through this people. I mean if thats a failure I think Joel just did the right thing. Now all that left is the anding scene and the blog post that discuss What Ellie Wants. Well correct if Im wrong and please just reply. Sorry for bad English.

180.253.102.165 wrote:I mean do you guys even heard the voice massage? It said that there are some of the people that are immune to it, so why on earth the fireflies wont make any diffrence through this people.

the voice message said that the other test subjects are nothing like Ellie, Ellie's cordyceps is mutated in her brain, so Ellie's immunity remain an extremely rare special case at this moment.

68.99.241.91 wrote:....think maybe he knew that if Ellie was given the choice, maybe she would have felt obligated to go through with it (survivor's guilt) and said yes to the surgery, so after he saved her, he lied to her to make her feel like she had no choice in the matter and it was beyond her control and that even though she wanted to help and make a difference, that it wouldn't have helped. Which, if other attempts did fail, then, it is partially the truth.

I don't understand why people think the fireflies are so evil because they "didn't give Ellie a choice," but Joel is fine even though he did the same thing. I mean, people justify every crazy, violent, morally wrong thing that Joel does in the game with "well, he just loves Ellie so much and that's what you have to do in this world to survive- the normal rules of morality don't apply," but the Fireflies are pure evil just because they didn't follow the freakin' hippocratic oath in dealing with Ellie? Finding a cure is the Fireflies "Ellie." They're willing to do anything, moral or not, in order to secure that. And honestly, if I were living in that world, that's something I would respect. Obviously, from our vantage point of falling in love with Joel and Ellie as characters throughout the game, we feel greater loyalty to them, but I can respect Marlene's perspective as well, intellectually. But in my heart I have that emotional bond to Ellie and Joel.

This is what made that scene at the elevator between Marlene and Joel so tense. It highlighted that they were both fighting for what THEY wanted, neither of them were really thinking about what Ellie wanted. Neither of them gave Ellie a choice. And I find it kind of insulting to Ellie to suggest that she's just "too emotional" to handle anything, so Joel had to lie to her "for her own good." I mean, from what Joel did in the hospital, he isn't the most emotionally sane person either.

I'm responding directly to the person who started this thread, but Sam and Tess would not have benefitted nor appreciated a vaccine. They may have appreciated a vaccine to help OTHER people, but a vaccine would not have helped them at all. Their wounds were not "minor." Regardless of the severity of the bite, it's still a bite nonetheless and they're infected. Vaccines aren't cures. A vaccine would not have saved Sam and Tess or anyone that was infected. I just wanted to clear that up.

In my opinion, Joel is a hero. He saved Ellie from the Fireflies. Yes, I agree with MayonnEgg in that Marlene and Joel were both fighting for what they wanted. But it seemed more humane and loving that Joel protected Ellie's life. Even though a vaccine would/may have been beneficial, how can you just let someone, not even a loved one just a stranger, die without them knowing what's going on? That's SO NOT RIGHT. That's not right to the person on the operating table who has no choice in the matter. I say make the person conscious and let them decide what they want to do. Ellie may have done everything to stay alive so she could get to the Fireflies to make a vaccine, but she was not aware that she would have to die for it. Who knows, if she had known she would have to die for it, Ellie may have changed her mind about going through with it. But it's revealed in the end of the game that Ellie was in fact "waiting for her turn." But that was because she felt SO guilty for living.. and in this cruel, apocalyptic world, she shouldn't have to feel guilty. She shouldn't have to sacrifice herself. Sure she has a gift, but she has a right to live just like everyone else. Ellie wasn't dead set on giving up her life for this vaccine nor did she have any idea that it would go down like that. Ellie wanted to learn to swim and wanted a happy ending. Had she been conscious, Ellie may have felt guilty and thus obligated to give up her life when she wouldn't have wanted to deep down. And Joel made the adult decision for her to live. He knew Ellie would have been disappointed if she knew the truth. She would have been disappointed that she couldn't have made a difference in the world, so Joel lied to her to make her feel better. But of course we know that she didn't completely buy it, that's why she asked Joel again if what he said was the truth. What I noticed is that Ellie continues to question those she knows is bullshitting her. She kept questioning Joel when he didn't want to take her to the Fireflies. She kept questioning David's "meal" that he offered to her. But when it came to Joel's lie at the end, she didn't question him too much. I think she wanted to hear him say he swore to the lie as a way of making him responsible for her guilt. Bottom line though, Joel was a hero because he saved Ellie from a choice she may not have wanted. The Fireflies absolutely did NOT give her a choice by prepping her for surgery right away and killing her in the process. I think it's better he saved her and risk her finding out the truth and continue looking for a vaccine than to have died for something she may not have wanted.

68.99.241.91 wrote:I'm responding directly to the person who started this thread, but Sam and Tess would not have benefitted nor appreciated a vaccine. They may have appreciated a vaccine to help OTHER people, but a vaccine would not have helped them at all. Their wounds were not "minor." Regardless of the severity of the bite, it's still a bite nonetheless and they're infected. Vaccines aren't cures. A vaccine would not have saved Sam and Tess or anyone that was infected. I just wanted to clear that up.

Yeah, we're all well aware of what the difference between a vaccine and a cure is. You're the one who seems to be mistaken. When we say a vaccine would have "saved" Sam and Tess, we don't mean after they became infected (those people are long gone,) we mean that if a vaccine had been available to them during their lifetimes and they had been vaccinated sometime before they were bitten, then they would have been essentially immune and therefore would have survived when they WERE bitten. Neither Tess nor Sam had fatal wounds, they both died of succumbing to the infection itself (or Tess would have if she hadn't been gunned down.)The whole point of a vaccine is to give your body the ability to fight off a disease prior to coming into contact with it, essentailly making you immune. Our point is that if they had grown up in a world where vaccine for CBI were available, and they had been vaccinated, then their deaths in the game would have been prevented. The larger point being that the argument that a vaccine wouldn't help humanity at all doesn't hold water because we see characters in the game who literally ONLY died because they became infected

Quite long discussion here. I'm not sure if anybody have mentioned something before.

If vaccine fails, then Ellie's life would be wasted. I can see what Joel had done to make a such decision. Is he selfish for not allow humanity to be saved? Maybe. But, it's maybe not, if we don't know what percents chance of Ellie's successful vaccine for CBI.

If vaccine fails, then Ellie's life would be wasted. I can see what Joel had done to make a such decision. Is he selfish for not allow humanity to be saved? Maybe. But, it's maybe not, if we don't know what percents chance of Ellie's successful vaccine for CBI.

Naughty Dog has actually confirmed (in this IGN podcast:http://www.ign.com/videos/2013/06/21/the-last-of-us-spoilercast) that Ellie's life wouldn't have been wasted- that it was basically a definite thing for them to get the vaccine from her. I mean, look at all the artifacts and everything you find in that chapter, they all confirm that Ellie was the "big break" that they had all been waiting for. They had been doing years of exhaustive research on infected patients, so they'd collected more than enough data on the infection itself, and then they find Ellie who is immune- making them more than capable of reverse engineering a vaccine. The whole "oh, well it wasn't a definite thing so what Joel did was okay," is just an excuse, and basically ruins the intentional moral ambiguity of the ending. Joel isn't a "hero," and he didn't do the "right thing," he denied humanity a vaccine. End of story.

Too bad, there is no closed caption or subtitle from the link you just provided, MayonnEgg. But, if that is what they truly said, that's really shame. I thought Ellie's possible success vaccine is ambiguity. =/

174.25.127.219 wrote:Too bad, there is no closed caption or subtitle from the link you just provided, MayonnEgg. But, if that is what they truly said, that's really shame. I thought Ellie's possible success vaccine is ambiguity. =/

Oh no, I'm sorry, I didn't even think of that! But yeah, apparently one of these guys from IGN interviewed Robert Kirkman and he basically confirmed that there really is no ambiguity about the fireflies ability to make a vaccine from Ellie. I also read an interview with Druckman talking about the ending and he outright stated that Joel denied humanity a vaccine. They purposefully don't want it to be at all easy for us to "accept" what Joel did.

ND have posted a photo on Twitter that shows Joel tied to a chair with some lady holding knife to his neck. They said it was one of the original endings. Could it be that Joel was to die in the Hospital by Marlene?

68.99.241.91 wrote:....think maybe he knew that if Ellie was given the choice, maybe she would have felt obligated to go through with it (survivor's guilt) and said yes to the surgery, so after he saved her, he lied to her to make her feel like she had no choice in the matter and it was beyond her control and that even though she wanted to help and make a difference, that it wouldn't have helped. Which, if other attempts did fail, then, it is partially the truth.

I don't understand why people think the fireflies are so evil because they "didn't give Ellie a choice," but Joel is fine even though he did the same thing. I mean, people justify every crazy, violent, morally wrong thing that Joel does in the game with "well, he just loves Ellie so much and that's what you have to do in this world to survive- the normal rules of morality don't apply," but the Fireflies are pure evil just because they didn't follow the freakin' hippocratic oath in dealing with Ellie? Finding a cure is the Fireflies "Ellie." They're willing to do anything, moral or not, in order to secure that. And honestly, if I were living in that world, that's something I would respect. Obviously, from our vantage point of falling in love with Joel and Ellie as characters throughout the game, we feel greater loyalty to them, but I can respect Marlene's perspective as well, intellectually. But in my heart I have that emotional bond to Ellie and Joel.

This is what made that scene at the elevator between Marlene and Joel so tense. It highlighted that they were both fighting for what THEY wanted, neither of them were really thinking about what Ellie wanted. Neither of them gave Ellie a choice. And I find it kind of insulting to Ellie to suggest that she's just "too emotional" to handle anything, so Joel had to lie to her "for her own good." I mean, from what Joel did in the hospital, he isn't the most emotionally sane person either.

I didn't say the Fireflies were evil. Their intentions were good, but the way they went about it was wrong. And Joel simply saving Ellie from a decision she was forced into? That in itself is very heroic. It doesn't even have to be someone you love, how can ANYONE be okay with just letting someone die and make the choice for them to die without their consent? It doesn't matter if it's "for the good of humanity" everyone has a right to live. And taking away Ellie's right at life? That's evil. But I wasn't saying the Fireflies are evil. The way they went about it was evil. And I wasn't saying she was "too emotional" to handle the weight of Joel's decision. But Ellie was very disappointed that the plan with finding a vaccine fell through. So, Joel felt that it was easier to lie to her. And then at the end, he realizes that she's been feeling guilty for living the whole time. At that point I think he knew that if she had been conscious to make the decision to go through with the surgery and they GAVE her that option, that she would have taken it. And Joel didn't feel like she had anything to feel guilty for. If I was in Joel's position (and I told her the truth) I would reassure her that she had nothing to feel guilty for. Even though she's immune, she has a right to life just as anyone else does. And I would tell her that her immunity was a blessing.. for her. And I think Joel's lie was even more justified (in my opinion) once he reaffirmed it again because he truly was protecting her from guilt of living. She wasn't planning on dying for this vaccine. She talked about a life after all this happened.. and learning to swim and do other things. If she was given the option for surgery to save humanity at the expense of her life, she would definitely have been torn. She wouldn't have been like "YEAH LET'S DO THIS WHOO!" She would have felt OBLIGATED by GUILT to go through with it. And instead of all that going down, Joel made the indirect decision for her. And that's the the player has to come to terms with. Because like someone said, this story isn't about what's morally right for the world, but what a normal human would do in this situation. Someone mentioned like fantasizing about what they'd do if they could control the situation, but I wouldn't have done anything different than what Joel would have done. In all honesty, despite all the artifacts being set on Ellie being the answer, I would have disregarded it and I would have thought about what was the right thing to do on a humane level. The first being it's not right to take someone choice at life away without their consent even if, in an alternative universe, they did want to die for the vaccine. You wouldn't have known that otherwise and it's simply the right thing to do to save someone from a fate they may not have wanted. Now people will argue and say, "Well Marlene said that this is what Ellie would have wanted, and Joel knew that. Marlene even said." But the point is.. we don't know what Ellie would have wanted. I don't think Ellie wanted to die for it. And Joel certainly didn't know it would have gone down like it did. Let's say Ellie did say, "Joel. I want to do whatever it takes for this vaccine. Even if it means.. I die. I feel like it's the right thing to do." And then Joel took Ellie away from the hospital? I don't think that's right. I think that would have totally changed my opinion about Joel. Because he didn't let Ellie do what she specifically asked. But we're not aware of any of that in the game. We don't know what Ellie truly wanted. She wanted to help make a vaccine, sure, but we don't know if she was willing to give up her life for this. I'm thinking she wouldn't have wanted to die for it because she wanted a life with Joel afterwards. And the only thing that would have made her go through with the surgery would have been guilt. And I personally don't think Ellie had anything to feel guilty for.

the whole idea about vaccine is wrong, you cannot make vaccine from fungi, the vaccine is used against viral or bacterial diseases , and it made from weakened or killed forms of microbe, not from fungi, I know it's a video game but it still a mistake from naughty dog , and for people who think in TLOS sequels there will be cure they are wrong it's a post -apocalypitc game , and most (if it's not all) post-apocalyptic games or movies or novels that i know there's no cure , and for TLOS it's impossible cause it's not viral or bacterial and we know that's all fiction but at least naughty dog should make more sense in their next games

68.99.241.91 wrote:I'm responding directly to the person who started this thread, but Sam and Tess would not have benefitted nor appreciated a vaccine. They may have appreciated a vaccine to help OTHER people, but a vaccine would not have helped them at all. Their wounds were not "minor." Regardless of the severity of the bite, it's still a bite nonetheless and they're infected. Vaccines aren't cures. A vaccine would not have saved Sam and Tess or anyone that was infected. I just wanted to clear that up.

Yeah, we're all well aware of what the difference between a vaccine and a cure is. You're the one who seems to be mistaken. When we say a vaccine would have "saved" Sam and Tess, we don't mean after they became infected (those people are long gone,) we mean that if a vaccine had been available to them during their lifetimes and they had been vaccinated sometime before they were bitten, then they would have been essentially immune and therefore would have survived when they WERE bitten. Neither Tess nor Sam had fatal wounds, they both died of succumbing to the infection itself (or Tess would have if she hadn't been gunned down.)The whole point of a vaccine is to give your body the ability to fight off a disease prior to coming into contact with it, essentailly making you immune. Our point is that if they had grown up in a world where vaccine for CBI were available, and they had been vaccinated, then their deaths in the game would have been prevented. The larger point being that the argument that a vaccine wouldn't help humanity at all doesn't hold water because we see characters in the game who literally ONLY died because they became infected

MayonnEgg,

On the contrary a lot of people don't seem to know the difference between a vaccine and a cure. That's why I wanted to clear it up. But thanks for trying to explain it to me again when I already knew, lol. The person that made the original post seemed to say that Tess, Sam, and Riley would have appreciated a vaccine like it could have saved their life. But they didn't know any different and also a vaccine wouldn't have reversed their condition. So that's why I said they would have appreciated a vaccine for OTHER people, but they died before they knew a vaccine was even a realistic answer. So it's pointless to say they would have appreciated a vaccine in their lifetime when.. they didn't know any different and it wasn't part of the game. And even if a vaccine were available during their time and made them immune, they still could have been ripped to shreds from the brute strength of the infected alone. I'm not one of these people who think that a vaccine wouldn't have helped humanity. But my point is.. what's the point? The world has been declining for 20 years and a lot of people don't trust each other anymore. Not to mention the Fireflies are losing the war against the military. No one seems to trust the Fireflies. If a vaccine were made, who would believe them? Would the hunters, cannibals, and other factions suddenly come around and accept the vaccine? And if they were "immune" would they help other people? No. They'd continue to survive against the infected because they can still be killed without being infected. The world would still be in survival mode and people wouldn't help each other. That's just my opinion. Sure a vaccine would help keep people alive and maybe even help rebuild the dying population. But society is still torn apart and I don't think things would have returned to how they would have been, especially since the infected are still around. The vaccine would stop people from getting infected, and in effect there would be less infected to fight. But there are still infected regardless that can kill without infecting someone and then there are factions still killing each other. A vaccine just seems pointless in the fact that.. it wouldn't return the world to how it was. I never got the vibe from playing the game that the vaccine would be the happy ending to the game. I saw no happy ending. I just knew there had to be an ending that would accept the world as it was and continue trying to survive. I never once thought that a vaccine would even help this world as far gone as it was. That's just my opinion. And at first I did use that as justifcation for what Joel did, but I am realizing now that Joel did take away humanity's chance at finding a vaccine. Ellie probably was the answer even though people say "we really don't know until they tear Ellie open and make a vaccine and if it works, it works, but there's a chance it won't" but I learned to accept what Joel did based off of what was right on a humane level as far as saving Ellie from a decision she may not have wanted. Who cares that he took humanity's chance at a vaccine. A VACCINE WOULD NOT HAVE SAVED THE WORLD. Joel is not the bad guy for taking away humanity's answer at a vaccine. I see it as "who cares if there's a vaccine, it won't be important enough to transform the world back to way it was." So there really is no point when you look at it in hindsight. It would have helped, but it wouldn't have saved the world. A vaccine is a bandaid for a world long gone from a virus for example. You know how bandaids protect wounds from getting other germs? That's what the vaccine would have done - prevent the world from inheriting more infected people. But the damage is already done. The body still has to cope with the virus that has destroyed most of it. The body has to learn to accept the virus and become immune to it slowly and fight it off. That's what the world is doing in this game. An example of that is Tommy's camp. That's an example of the world "fighting off the virus." A bandaid/vaccine helps a little but the world has to regain strength mostly on its own in more ways than worrying about getting infected. Society itself is trashed. The body/world would be able to fix itself without needing a vaccine. I know this isn't in the "script" of the game, but if people stayed in their quarantine zones and stayed away from the infected, the infected would eventually find a dark, humid location, the infection would kill the host, and the cordyceps would release their spores. The infection would kill its host once it reached the stage to release spores. And at that point the military could go in and look for the fallen infected and burn them. Or knowing that the infected are attracted to sound, they could round them up like they did in World War Z and just blow them all up. Unlike in World War Z which is an actual virus (much more difficult to control), I feel like the infection in The Last of Us would be much easier to eradicate because you know at one point the creature will die, so you just plan your extermination methods around the phases of the infection.

Well,invented or not, they succeed or not, theres no function for it. I mean it will take like couple years to find it and if in that couple years a lot of people had already bitten or got into somekind of post-apocalyptic worldwar3 than whats the frickin function for it?And we dont even know if they will made it or not. I mean come on guys, they only had some of equipments from that we could pictured that they had50% chances of succes and 50% chances to fail.So no offense but this things that we are arguing on will never had an end unless ND gave us the answer,so lets just all calm down and debate this rationally. And if you guys dont stop might be a wild user will use harsh language. Im not meaning to stop this debate but for what we type till this long just for a thing that needs ND to answer it. Now if you could say Im a fool to typed this but these things have no end.):

That's why this thread is a debate ;P It's just people's opinions. And I made a response to the person who mentioned that a fungal infection couldn't have a vaccine made for it, but it got deleted somehow. But anyway, to the person who wrote that, I agreed with you at first. I thought it was a flaw on ND's part because I thought a fungal infection couldn't have a vaccine made for it but there can be. Anything that our body can fight against a vaccine can pretty much be made for it - be it a bacteria, virus, or fungus. In fact I did a little research and they're making a vaccine for the common yeast infection that women get because it happens to be so common and bothersome. Fungus', just like viruses and bacteria, have antigens that our antibodies fight against and so if we take those antigens and weaken them, introduce them to our immune system, then our bodies can figure out how to fight against it. But I thought the same thing at first, I was wondering why the Fireflies were trying to make a vaccine for a fungal infection, but turns out that it can actually be done.

mmhmm Im totally think like you, wondering why Fireflies were trying to make a vaccine for a fungal infection, but turns out that it can actually be done. Well, I have to say about your little research that from that I think youre a smart person. Anyway if youre mad about what I thought and typed above, thats alright.Thats just my opinion about this. So sorry if what I typed actually pissed you off. Im so sorry.

Uh, I made the original post. Both posts, same person. So, yeah. I was talking about how a vaccine would help people like them. The larger point being that the concept of a vaccine isn't worthless, because, look, Sam and Riley and Tess ONLY died because they became infected. Not from being "ripped to shreds," or shot, but from becoming infected from non-fatal wounds, then dying. If they were immune from a vaccine, that wouldn't have happened. They would still be alive. The same principle can undoubtedly be applied to many, many other people in the world of TLOU.

And your argument that because a vaccine won't bring everything back to the way it was, then it's essentially useless is just... Like, did you even read the thread? I feel like multiple people, including myself, have addressed/countered every aspect of your argument already. I even said in the original post that just because a vaccine wouldn't be some magical cure all and bring everything back to the way it was, doesn't make it useless. That's like saying any treatment for cancer that isn't a cure is useless. Humanity has to slowly rebuild, and that would be made a LOT easier if they at least didn't have to worry about the infection spreading through the populace. But I can understand why JOEL would see it as "who cares if there's a vaccine, it won't change the world back," because of what he's gone through losing Sarah in such a tragic way (causing him to mistrust the military and all authority figures really) and having the sting of those memories of how nice it used to be before everything went down, and from becoming such a world-weary, cynical individual. But from a pragmatic perspective, no, a vaccine is NOT useless. The whole vaccine plot device exists almost solely to increase the gravity of Joel's decision and the moral ambiguity of the ending. If it's useless, that carefuly constructed moral ambiguity falls apart.

Tis your opinion MayonnEgg. You're not right, nor am I. That's why this is a debate :P Sorry for forgetting you made the original post. This thread has gotten so long I'm a bit lost now on following everyone's responses. I said a vaccine would be kind of pointless, but that's my opinion that's all. I think the ending is just to be interpretted how you want it to. That's why it's sort of open-ended. Even though, playing as Joel, you're forced to accept the story how he sees it. And he sees a vaccine as not worth Ellie's life. So as the player you're forced to accept and respect the decisions he made or be bitte and think he;s the bad guy because the game doesn't give you the option to choose how it ends. Just the way you said "Joel isn't the 'hero' and he didn't do the 'right' thing. End of story" just sounded like you're forcing your opinions on others and it was kind of irritating, that's all. Not everyone agrees with you. I personally see Joel as a hero in that he saved Ellie from the unethical decisions of the Fireflies. And simply protecting Ellie makes him a hero in my opinion.

Btgr: I have no idea, lol. He was just being led out of the hospital by that Firefly and just noticed her backpack sitting there. It was very symbolic though don't you think? Once he noticed it, he knew for sure he couldn't leave the hospital without her. He couldn't let her go.

"Personally speaking, I think while a vaccine would have done some good, by stopping the growth of the infected (assuming a vaccine could be made and it worked) the world and its human inhabitants had changed too much for things to ever return to 'normal.' In fact, to alot of people, the life they already lived - quarantine zones, martial law, infected, hunters - was 'normal'. Even the survivors who remembered the days before the outbreak, you would be kidding yourself to think that after 20 years of living and fighting in a hostile environment like this one, that once a vaccine was made, they'd be back to having barbecues and going to the movies. It's just not gonna happen."

Btgr: I have no idea, lol. He was just being led out of the hospital by that Firefly and just noticed her backpack sitting there. It was very symbolic though don't you think? Once he noticed it, he knew for sure he couldn't leave the hospital without her. He couldn't let her go.

180.245.187.170 wrote:mmhmm Im totally think like you, wondering why Fireflies were trying to make a vaccine for a fungal infection, but turns out that it can actually be done. Well, I have to say about your little research that from that I think youre a smart person. Anyway if youre mad about what I thought and typed above, thats alright.Thats just my opinion about this. So sorry if what I typed actually pissed you off. Im so sorry.

I dont know why you think you pissed me off. You didnt, lol. In fact I was saying that I originally agreed with you and this was my argument too. I thought Naughty Dog made a mistake in researching fungal infections, but turns out they're right. I'm not mad at you, sheesh. I dont know why you assumed that.

Before I say my point of view regarding giving Ellie the choice, I would like to clear up the fact that Ellie wanted BOTH to help make the cure and be with Joel.

With that said, I do agree with you that Ellie should have been given the choice, however, I do not think that would be for the better. Have you ever been in the position where you would have to side with one friend/loved one while ultimately crushing another? That is incomparable to what Ellie would experience. Her deal would be "Would you be the salvation of humanity? Or the salvation of the one and only person you truly care about?

If that was the case, I imagine myself cringing the entire scene while Ellie was making the decision. It would be extremely uneasy to watch an innocent looking girl being torn appart by making a decision in which the consequences are of this magnitude.

I said this many times before, even if Marlene got her way it wouldn't matter since Ellie would have been willing to help anyway. But we all know what really happened and most of us didn't like it so we just rationalize what Joel did.

What I ask is to those who think they would have done differently, would you really do what you think would have done given the circumstances? I mean, saying I would have sacrificed her is one thing, actually doing it if you were exactly in his position is another.

I agree with Croouu about how Ellie should have been given the choice. But obviously like you said, Croouu, she would have been torn between the decisions. It's revealed in the end though from Ellie's confession that she felt guilty for living. And in my opinion I think that's what makes Joel's lie more justifiable. If Ellie was given the choice, she would have gone through with the surgery out of guilt. I don't think she would have wanted to die for it, however. And Joel made the true choice of what she wanted - to live. So in a way Joel saved Ellie from her own guilt. I think Joel saved Ellie from a decision she didn't want to make. I know people can say that they'd do one thing, but then in an actual situation they'd do another, but if I was in Joel's case I absolutely would have saved Ellie and I wouldn't have felt guilty about humanity's chance at a vaccine at all. I would know that just simply taking away someone's choice at life just because an untrusted militia rushedly wanted to make a vaccine, with no guarantee that it'd work (let's forget what the game producers said about there being no ambiguity as far as if the vaccine would have worked) without trying to figure out a less lethal way of going about it, was wrong. I would know that it was wrong.

I wanted to touch on Joel not being "heroic." Tess obviously said they were shitty people but that's simply because Tess and Joel are survivors. You do what you have to to survive. Does that make you evil or moralless? No, not necessarily. Joel still had morals though. He sacrificed himself to keep Ellie alive so that a vaccine could be made, but then once he realized that it would kill Ellie, his morals switched over from doing what was right for humanity, to doing what was right for Ellie. His intentions throughout the game seemed to be "good" to me overall. I think the things he did was right overall despite being a ruthless survivor. He never lost his caring, loving, fatherly instinct in this dark world of TLOU. Just my opinion. I think he did a lot of things "right."

Btgr: I have no idea, lol. He was just being led out of the hospital by that Firefly and just noticed her backpack sitting there. It was very symbolic though don't you think? Once he noticed it, he knew for sure he couldn't leave the hospital without her. He couldn't let her go.

I thought you were saying you found Ellie's backpack as you were going through the hospital. But you're just saying that he took her out of the hospital without her backpack and then on their way back to Tommy's she magically had it again? lol. That's a good point. I'm not sure how he got it. I guess it wasn't in he script.

The car they used to runaway perhaps is the same car being used by fireflies to bring Joel & Ellie to the hospital. This is the best explanation I might come with, although i know it's still sound nonsense.

I write a comment about that they cannot make vaccine fungal infections , and someone pointed here that acutally it could be, and it's true , after reading the commnets I searched the internet , actually scientists recently make a progress for making vaccine for yeast infection that women have as shown in this link

regarding some people pointing about ellie's backpack or from where joel found a car in the hospital or whatever please note that you are commenting in the wrong section make a thread for your subject and I mentioned early in my comment above about vaccine and it's mistake from naughty dog I didn't try to bash naughty dog even if they made mistake (which I thought it's not) still they made a great game even if you found some flaws it's ok , it's impossible to find a game without few flaws and it's not ruin the experience

Winterlotus90 wrote:Tis your opinion MayonnEgg. You're not right, nor am I. That's why this is a debate :P Sorry for forgetting you made the original post. This thread has gotten so long I'm a bit lost now on following everyone's responses. I said a vaccine would be kind of pointless, but that's my opinion that's all. I think the ending is just to be interpretted how you want it to. That's why it's sort of open-ended. Even though, playing as Joel, you're forced to accept the story how he sees it. And he sees a vaccine as not worth Ellie's life. So as the player you're forced to accept and respect the decisions he made or be bitte and think he;s the bad guy because the game doesn't give you the option to choose how it ends. Just the way you said "Joel isn't the 'hero' and he didn't do the 'right' thing. End of story" just sounded like you're forcing your opinions on others and it was kind of irritating, that's all. Not everyone agrees with you. I personally see Joel as a hero in that he saved Ellie from the unethical decisions of the Fireflies. And simply protecting Ellie makes him a hero in my opinion.

Btgr: I have no idea, lol. He was just being led out of the hospital by that Firefly and just noticed her backpack sitting there. It was very symbolic though don't you think? Once he noticed it, he knew for sure he couldn't leave the hospital without her. He couldn't let her go.

Jeeze, I seem to have this problem of coming across as angry in my posts sometimes, haha. I was enjoying the debate! I think it boils down to how much you identified with Joel throughout the game. I'm pretty much nothing like Joel, so I kind of have this detachment from him where even though I "am" him in the game, I don't see his decisions as my own. And thanks for explaining more on why you consider Joel a hero, that kind of initially threw me off.

And I had forgotten how freakin long this thread had gotten, so I just went and found one of the post I had been talking about, addressing the whole "humanity is screwed beyond repair," thing, if you wanted to read it:

"Something I've noticed when thinking about this topic is that it seemes like the most damaged, and dangerous, individuals that we meet on our journey are people who were alive before the infection. I think the survivors who remember the "old days" are actually worse off than people like Ellie. It must be such a great burden to wake up every day knowing that the world you now live in is so crappy compared to The Way It Was. Society losing stability like that brings out the worst in people, people like David, for instance. But, look at Ellie. And Sam, and all the friends Ellie had in the Boston QZ. They're pretty much normal, non-psychopathic people, because this is the only world they know, and it's not a big deal to them. Ellie frequently marvels at the beauty of what probably look like hellish landscapes to Joel, because he remembers what they're "supposed" to look like.

Overall, I don't think that their world is necessarily cursed to be populated almost entirely by infected and rapists/murderers forever. Like it's said in the game, hunters don't keep kids around, so they'll eventually die out. I see the hunters as the last of Joel's dying generation- those who fell from the "old" world. This leaves the next generation, of people like Ellie, Sam, and Riley behind. I don't think it could ever return to "normal," because our normal is Joel's normal, and they'll never get that back. But that's not to say that future generations, like Ellie's, wouldn't be able to gradually improve quality of life, to better cope with their circumstances. So, I guess I don't fully believe that society is f-ed beyond repair, but Joel's generation pretty much is, because of the tremendous loss they've had to endure in losing their old lives/loved ones. The sting from that memory is never going to go away."

I'm sorry for my angry-toned responses, MayonnEgg. lol. I respect everyone's opinions on here because this game is so freaken awesome and it's fun to talk about! So I'm sorry if anything got heated during the discussion, lol. And reading your response I agree that with time, their quality of life would improve and a vaccine would have allowed for some normalcy to return. I'm not going to deny anymore that a vaccine would have been beneficial because I wanted to believe that there was ambiguity in the vaccine not working. I believed that for a while. But we're just kidding ourselves to deny that it wouldn't have worked. But in reality, no one really knows if it would work or not, but we're pretty strongly made to believe that Elli was the answer to a vaccine. The game developers said and how it's implied when you're finding the artifacts, Ellie was the answer for a vaccine. Joel just didn't believe it was worth Ellie's life. And whether he thought about it during the moment or not, the scene with the giraffes at one point made him stop and think about whether or not this treacherous journey was worth their lives. I think Joel knew that Ellie was the answer for a vaccine too, but I think he had a feeling also that it could get worse once they found the Fireflies. And so the giraffes gave him a moment to think about whether continuing the journey was worth their lives when the giraffes represented that with or without a vaccine, life and nature would continue on and fix itself with time. That's not to rob the vaccine of making a difference. It just reveals to us how Joel feels of the situation and forces the player to think differently than what you would expect like "there's a martyr and she dies to save the world. Her protector is saddened by her loss. But he's able to live on knowing it was the right thing to do for humanity. And in a way Ellie avenged Sarah's death by finding a vaccine to stop the madness. So in a way Ellie's sacrifice avenged Sarah's death and that justifies Joel's actions by letting her go" I guess it could be looked at that way too. But no, we're not made to accept that ending. The ending just seemed to fit so well with how screwed up the world had become even if what Joel did was not right for humanity, it was right to him as a survivor fending for himself and not really giving a damn about the world after 20 years of corruption. At this point Joel was thinking of survival and felt that Ellie deserved life as much as anyone else. I truly feel like the ending was.. as real as it could get. We would all expect or hope for this man to let the girl go for humanity and be the "hero" for mankind. But if this were a REAL situation.. I think what Joel did is what anybody would have done. And that's what makes the ending so controversial because it's such a humane decision what he did. And as we all know, humans are very controversial. lol

Winterlotus90 wrote:I thought you were saying you found Ellie's backpack as you were going through the hospital. But you're just saying that he took her out of the hospital without her backpack and then on their way back to Tommy's she magically had it again? lol. That's a good point. I'm not sure how he got it. I guess it wasn't in he script.

They can scavenge bodies on the way to Tommy's for clothes and some supplies. Probably found a back pack also.

Let's just assume the vaccine was viable, was able to be produced in sufficient quantities as well as able to be administered easily, quickly and would have had a 100% success rate.

Even if the above was possible, I feel a vaccine would not have been the "saviour of mankind" it was portrayed to be and would only create further conflict and push man closer to annihalation. If we examine the world of "The Last of Us" we see a society that is fractured, cruel and unforgiving and while the infection and infected remain a threat, the real danger is other people.

As we see in Tommy's town, they have control of the area, have kept out the infected and remain vigilant. The quarantined zones are safe due to the militaries total control, remorseless policing and zero tolerance. That is why they relatively safe and civilized. It's a harsh way to live but as we see outside the zone, it's mostly completely lawless and very dangerous.

Now we see in the game the two main factions, the military and the Fireflys. Opinion among the general population is they fear the military but think the Fireflys are deluded. If the Fireflys annouced a cure, a) who would belive them and b) do you really think they will give it to everyone out of the goodness of their hearts? Of course not. They would use it as a recruiting tool and use it to gather political power to overthrow the military. Would the military just allow this to happen? No way, they would launch an all out war to either retrieve the vaccine or to wipe out the fireflys.

In the end it doesn't matter if Joel saved Ellie for selfish reasons. The vaccine was a pointless dream, and in the end would only have cause more conflict. Joel had little faith in humanity at that point. The time for a vaccine was long ago.

58.164.12.218 wrote:Let's just assume the vaccine was viable, was able to be produced in sufficient quantities as well as able to be administered easily, quickly and would have had a 100% success rate.

Even if the above was possible, I feel a vaccine would not have been the "saviour of mankind" it was portrayed to be and would only create further conflict and push man closer to annihalation. If we examine the world of "The Last of Us" we see a society that is fractured, cruel and unforgiving and while the infection and infected remain a threat, the real danger is other people.

As we see in Tommy's town, they have control of the area, have kept out the infected and remain vigilant. The quarantined zones are safe due to the militaries total control, remorseless policing and zero tolerance. That is why they relatively safe and civilized. It's a harsh way to live but as we see outside the zone, it's mostly completely lawless and very dangerous.

Now we see in the game the two main factions, the military and the Fireflys. Opinion among the general population is they fear the military but think the Fireflys are deluded. If the Fireflys annouced a cure, a) who would belive them and b) do you really think they will give it to everyone out of the goodness of their hearts? Of course not. They would use it as a recruiting tool and use it to gather political power to overthrow the military. Would the military just allow this to happen? No way, they would launch an all out war to either retrieve the vaccine or to wipe out the fireflys.

In the end it doesn't matter if Joel saved Ellie for selfish reasons. The vaccine was a pointless dream, and in the end would only have cause more conflict. Joel had little faith in humanity at that point. The time for a vaccine was long ago.

I don't think that a vaccine was portrayed as a "savior of mankind," for all the reasons you stated- the game definitely makes a case for why Joel feels so jaded and detached from the world of TLOU- it's full of an oppressive military, vicious hunters on the outside, and the ethically dubious fireflies. But, that doesn't make the vaccine pointless, because to conclude that basically lets Joel off the hook. Which goes against everything Neil Druckman himself has stated in his intentions for the ending. We are supposed to feel that Joel really put something on the line and sacrificed something. If we just agree that a vaccine would be pointless and "cause more conflict," then we're basically having our cake and eating it too: we (Joel) made both the logical choice (in that the vaccine option would have been pointless anyway) and the selfish, human one (saving Ellie and having her to ourselves.) Neil Druckman has stated that the whole vaccine and Ellie being immune thing only exists in the story so that you can be faced with that choice in the end. If we conclude that the vaccine is inherently worthless, then the gravity of that final decision falls apart. Ultimately, the whole point is that Joel made the selfish, but more human, decision. That's what made the ending so interesting and refreshing in the first place.

I'm finally coming to terms with what MayonnEgg is saying ;) and I agree with what MayonnEgg and what you said too, contributor 58.164 (lol). Outside of the video game we feel that in hindsight a vaccine would be pointless and maybe it potentially could cause more problems. But aside from that, we're strongly made to believe that the vaccine is the answer, "the next penicillin discovery." The developers probably figured that players would have this belief that a vaccine would be pointless in some ways as a way of justifying Joel's actions, and maybe in the real world in these circumstances it could have caused more harm than good, but regardless - an answer is out there. It's Ellie. The vaccine was like 99.9% guaranteed to work. And it's implied that it would make a significance difference in saving humanity. The fact that society is trashed due to the apocalypse doesn't come up as a factor in whether the vaccine is useless or not to create, just that a vaccine would save humanity from extinction in general. It's implied that a vaccine is needed and important as a first step in rebuilding the human race. And then they'd worry about rebuilding society later. The Fireflies probably would have used it for some kind of political propaganda knowing how they are and retaliating against the military. But like MayonnEgg said, we're not supposed to think about it like that. We're supposed to believe that a vaccine would make a significance difference in how humanity is saved and this is what makes Joel's decision so controversial because he took that away. And I'm taking this information and trying to disregard the other plausible yet irrevelant pointless needs for a vaccine and I've justified his actions rather on the humane response to the situation - saving someone he cared about, saving her from a decision she may not have wanted to make herself, and saving her in general from the unethical way the Fireflies went about forcing her into surgery without her consent (just my opinions). And people say it's selfish but would you let your son, daughter, husband, wife, boyfriend, mother, father, die just to save a bunch of strangers? Most people wouldn't. It bothers me that people say Joel is selfish for wanting to do this. There has to be a better term.. it's just a very natural and normal response to a situation like this. It's part of human nature. And I don't see anything wrong with it, as horrible as that might sound to some people. We should understand why Joel made the decision he did and try not to call him a villain or the anti-hero or selfish. I know he's just a video game character but I'm speaking on behalf of just any normal person too who wouldn't give up their loved one for ANYONE. I don't know any normal person who would be like "I love my wife so much.. oh she's the answer to AIDS? She's immune to it? I'm totally fine with you killing her for a vaccine. It saves the world after all. I'll get over it in time." Like.. no. No one would do that. We would all want to save and protect our loved ones. So we have to appreciate Joel's actions alone as being very human and not rest them on other justifications like a vaccine would/could be pointless if this were a real situation. The only way I personally would let a loved one go is if they specially asked to be sacrificed and wanted to die to save other people. I would respect their decision and try to let them go because that's what they would have wanted. I would hope I could do that for them anyway.. gosh this is depressing :( But anyway I'm not trying to say you're right or wrong, contributor, I'm just expressing a different way to look at the game. A way in which I/we think the developers wanted us to see it and take from it. It makes the player more appreciative and respectful of the story because it goes against what people would normally expect or think to happen - that someone ends up being sacrificed for the good of mankind - when in reality the ending was a very real response to any situation similar to this because it's human nature.

In my opinion what Ellie wanted at the end when she asked Joel was the 'truth' (that Joel had lied to her about not being able to make vaccine and stuff). She knows that Joel had lied to her but she wants to hear the truth from him and feels disappointed about the fact that he lied to her even till the end.

I think if he had told her the truth that he did not want to lose her, she would have accepted it (but feel guilty about it)

If she was to make the choice, she would have decided to die since so many people died during her course of life and wants to repay those who died or help the humanity.

However as we can see in the game, she is a 'survivor'. She even manages herself during the winter! She can kill zombies and people to live. It is clear that she has a strong will to live and as a normal 14-year-old girl, she would have wanted to stay with Joel.

119.149.153.179 wrote:In my opinion what Ellie wanted at the end when she asked Joel was the 'truth' (that Joel had lied to her about not being able to make vaccine and stuff). She knows that Joel had lied to her but she wants to hear the truth from him and feels disappointed about the fact that he lied to her even till the end.

I think if he had told her the truth that he did not want to lose her, she would have accepted it (but feel guilty about it)

If she was to make the choice, she would have decided to die since so many people died during her course of life and wants to repay those who died or help the humanity.

However as we can see in the game, she is a 'survivor'. She even manages herself during the winter! She can kill zombies and people to live. It is clear that she has a strong will to live and as a normal 14-year-old girl, she would have wanted to stay with Joel.

Since it's left up to interpretation (as developers have said), Ellie may not have believed Joel the first time he lied, but do you think she believed his second lie? Where he said "I swear" to Ellie making him promise?

I agree, I think she would understand but still feel guilty and upset.

Yes she would have survivor's guilt. I agree too I don't think she would have wanted to die for the vaccine so it's important to the story that Joel made that decision for her, as I'm sure the developers didn't want to see Ellie have to make that choice. No child should have the world on their shoulders like that.

I just watched the ending and there is no way that Ellie would believe Joel.

She was wearing the surgery gown and when she woke up he said "Drug is wearing off".

Why would she be wearing that and be drugged unless she was being prepared for surgery??

Ellie is a smart girl and would put the pieces together.

Also it is interesting that Joel knows the significance of Ellie and vaccine. When he was talking to Tommy he said, cure for the mankind or something. He knows that, and he still decides to save Ellie. Both lost so many people they cared for it would have been heart breaking to see Ellie die.

Yeah but.. Joel wouldn't have let Ellie go with Tommy if he knew Ellie would die for it. In fact he wanted Ellie to go with Tommy because he thought it would be safer.

Or because he didn't want to grow too attached to Ellie.

Ellie would never leave Joel... not even if she found out the truth. I think that as soon as after the end of the level with Tommy (when Joel decides to go with Ellie), Ellie would have done the same for Joel.

Yeah but.. Joel wouldn't have let Ellie go with Tommy if he knew Ellie would die for it. In fact he wanted Ellie to go with Tommy because he thought it would be safer.

Or because he didn't want to grow too attached to Ellie.

Ellie would never leave Joel... not even if she found out the truth. I think that as soon as after the end of the level with Tommy (when Joel decides to go with Ellie), Ellie would have done the same for Joel.

Do you think she woulld have done the same for him?

Yeah, I think that the subtext of Joel wanting Ellie to go with Tommy "because safety," was really him being in denial about their relationship, thus their exchange in the house. Or he recognized that he was starting to care for Ellie at a deeper level, and that freaked him out, and/or was afraid of re-opening the wounds from Sarah.

I don't think Ellie would leave Joel, even if she knew the truth. It would certainly impact their relationship in some way, but I think that their bond is too strong, and like Ellie says in the house, everybody she ever cared for died or left her- Joel is the first reliable, loving figure in her life. I think that the Winter chapter proved that Ellie is willing to do basically anything for Joel.

I don't think Ellie would leave Joel, even if she knew the truth. It would certainly impact their relationship in some way, but I think that their bond is too strong, and like Ellie says in the house, everybody she ever cared for died or left her- Joel is the first reliable, loving figure in her life. I think that the Winter chapter proved that Ellie is willing to do basically anything for Joel.

I am really wishing ND can make a giant cutscene (not necessarily a game) abt Ellie knows the truth and how she confront Joel, kinda that ranch house scene. How do you female gamers put yourselves in Ellie shoes, what do u think of words she will say to Joel, how Joel will reply back, and what will happen after that?

I tend to overthink things, so personally if what happened to Ellie happened to me I would have confronted Joel right away and demanded answers about why I was in a hospital gown and why I was sedated and why he took me away. I always want to know the truth even if it hurts because then it bugs me for a long time. Like it just sticks in my mind and it drives me crazy. So I wouldn't be able to do what Ellie did and just.. push it under the rug and accept what Joel told me. I would rather know the truth and deal with the guilt and disappointment and try to figure out another way or at least learn to accept it and see the brighter side of the situation. I never want to think "what if." But it's also hard to say for me too because if I feel REALLY bad about something I always want to be talked out of feeling bad.. I think everyone has experienced that. They want someone on their side or someone to convince them that what happened wasn't their fault or that they didn't do anything wrong. Regardless I wouldn't want the truth hidden from me, but should I feel terribly guilty afterwards I would want some convincing that it's better to move on, accept the situation, and to look at the bright side of things.

It's interesting Mikey, I've thought about what the dialogue would be had Joel just came out and told her the truth. And this is something I came up with:

Joel: Ellie.. Do you remember what I told you.. about the Fireflies and how they stopped looking for a cure?

Ellie: Yea..?

Joel: I wasn't completely honest with you. I swore to you that I was, but please listen. On our way to the hospital you drowned.. you were unconscious. I was trying to revive you when a Firefly hit me in the head, making me unconscious as well. When I woke up, Marlene was there. She told me you were getting ready to go into surgery and that I couldn't see you. Everyone at the hospital was convinced you were the answer to finding a vaccine. But.. they had to remove your brain in order to make it. Being that the cordyceps grow all over the brain.. Ellie. I know you're upset that I lied to you.. But you have to understand. I couldn't let you die at the hands of the Fireflies. I did what I thought was right.. and I saved you. That's why you were wearing the hospital gown. That's why you were sedated. I lied to you because I know how disappointed you would have been that you couldn't be apart of making the vaccine.. that I took your chance away to make a difference in this world.. And then you confessed to me that you felt guilty for the deaths of Riley.. Tess.. and Sam.. And lying to you again was my way of protecting you from that guilt.. and I'm sorry. I hope you can forgive me.

Ellie: Joel.. I get why you did it. I really do. You care about me.. and I care about you. You couldn't lose anymore people that you cared about.. *sigh* I really.. wanted to be apart of this. I can't believe Marlene would just.. give me up like that.. She was never there for me anyway.. Like I said, I grew up in an orphanage when my mom told Marlene to care for me.. Marlene was with the Fireflies for her own reasons.. and I was a pawn to her in the end.. But so what? What if the vaccine worked Joel? What if I was able to save people? Just like Tess pleaded for.. I know I wasn't able to make the decision.. but I let down Riley.. Tess.. and Sam.. Especially Tess. She died to get me out of the capital building.. so I could live another day. I had a mission, Joel. I was the answer!

Joel: You have a right to live.. as much as anyone else does. A 14 year old girl doesn't need the weight of the world on her shoulders.. The deaths of Tess, Riley, and Sam.. Like I said before.. that's not on you. You are not responsible for that.

Ellie: But I am Joel! I get what you did.. but how am I supposed to live like this now? What am I supposed to do? I'm alive and people are still dying.. I have the answer and it's being kept from the world..

Joel: We don't know that for certain..

Ellie: Are you f*cking with me Joel?! Most of the world is gone.. and I'm the only known answer to this mess..

Joel: You might be right. But I did what I thought was right..

Ellie: I know you care about me but.. why couldn't you let me go? After everything we've been through I get it.. but.. our goal was this vaccine. You knew how important my life was yelling at me at the farm house.. and then you change your mind? I wouldn't have known any different had you left the hospital..

Joel: Do you really expect me to be able to live with myself having left you for DEAD? Without you even knowing what was going on? Don't tell me you want to die for this, Ellie.. I protected you and kept you safe all the way to the hospital. And then for the Fireflies to just.. snuff you out for a test? Marlene said these tests were getting harder and harder.. this was a test Ellie. No one knows for certain if this vaccine would have worked..

Ellie: Don't tell me that!.. I know it would have. You were even convinced!.. but even if it didn't it would have been better for the world to know so that it could continue looking for an answer.. I wouldn't have known any different Joel.. I was always unconscious.. you should have left me..

Joel: I COULDN'T DO THAT ELLIE! Do you really expect me to have done that? I KNOW that's not what you wanted!

Ellie: Did you take me from the Fireflies because.. of what happened to Sarah? Was that some kind of way to redeem yourself because you felt it was your fault that Sarah died?

Joel: In a way.. yes. But more importantly it was because I couldn't leave you with the Fireflies. Your life is not worth this vaccine. You mean more to me now than this world. I was in the dark for 20 years, Ellie.. and you saved me. Multiple times. And I had to return that to you.. I wasn't going to let you go. Please tell me you didn't want to die for this Ellie.. I know we had a goal to reach. The vaccine. And getting you to the hospital. But I had no idea.. you were going to have to die for this..

Ellie: I didn't.. either.. but.. I dedicated myself to this and.. I feel that this was my purpose in life.. And now the opportunity is gone.. And I don't know how I can continue living with this guilt..

Joel: That is why I lied to you Ellie and I'm sorry.. Did you want me to let you go?..

Ellie: I don't know.. I mean.. who wants to die?

Joel: Listen, Ellie. I lived for 20 years with guilt.. Like I could have done something differently to save Sarah.. But I pressed on. I know how much this meant to you.. the vaccine.

Ellie: I'm thankful though.. that I wasn't awake to make the decision.. Because I wouldn't have been able to. As guilty as I feel for Riley, Tess, and Sam.. I wouldn't have been able to leave you Joel.. I know I wouldn't have wanted to die.. But I had survived for so long.. We worked so hard.. risked our lives for this.. It couldn't have been for nothing..

Joel: It wasn't for nothing.. we know you're the answer. But there has to be another way.. You know the Fireflies have been struggling to find a vaccine for a long time.. They were about ready to tear anyone apart to find that answer.. And look.. we grew closer along the way. You know that has to mean something.. *smiles* You have nothing to feel guilty for, kiddo.. really. You're special, but not at the price of a vaccine. And regardless.. the world will get along. I know it will. This was humanity's fate and who knows whether a vaccine would really even stop the infection..

Ellie: To answer your question.. I didn't want to die. If I was faced with the decision.. I would have felt like I needed to die.. because I felt so guilty. I felt like.. this was my fate, my destiny.. But.. as selfish as it sounds.. I wouldn't have wanted to die.. I don't think anyone does.. especially with the way the world is. We all want to survive..

Joel: I understand completely. It's not selfish, Ellie. We all want to survive.. And you wanted me to teach you how to swim right? You love life.. I can tell.

Ellie: As f*cked up as the world is.. I do love it. I wish I had known what it was like before it all went to sh*t.. And maybe one day I will, since I hold the answer.

Joel: That's a better way of looking at it, baby girl. You'll be okay. Now you understand why I lied to you.. do you forgive me?

Ellie: Yes..

Joel: Any guilt that you feel.. any disappoinment.. you can rest in me, alright? I am your scapegoat from all this. It's my fault. Okay? You don't have anything to feel guilty for.

Nice post, Winterlotus90! I think that's extremely plausible. Especially since Ellie was just a kid when that all went down, I think it would soften the blow considerably. Like Neil Druckman has said, no parent would do any different. When you wrote that Ellie, if faced with the decision wouldn't have wanted to die, but would have felt like she *needed* to die, is so true. Especially since she seemed to have no idea that her dying in the process would have ever come up, so it's not like she had any chance to emotionally prepare herself. I think how she takes it would depend on how old she is at the time. I could also see her bringing it up in the heat of the moment during an argument or something (the teen years are a difficult time, haha.) I mean, she knows that there's something fishy about his story, so even if she mentally decides to put it on the back burner for now, I think it'll knaw at her for a while before it comes to a head. I mean, it only takes one casual mention of the fireflies (or her seeing a firefly haha) to potentially bring those old doubts to the surface. That's assuming Joel doesn't decide to calmy explain it to her first, like what Winterlotus90 laid out.

Yeah definitely. There's no way the subject wouldn't come up at some point. Yea! It would definitely bug me.. especially when I have doubts about what people are telling me. Not to get too personal or deviate from the subject too much, but my ex tolds me lies and stuff and I just had a feeling for 2 and half years he was lying but I didn't want to believe it. But it drew us farther apart from each other. Then he finally told me the truth and.. talk about the truth setting you free, lol. I ended up saying goodbye. So.. yeah this could definitely relate to Ellie. Especially since making the vaccine was SO important to her. It would come out eventually. Sorry for the typos in my post, but it means a lot that someone likes what I wrote, so thanks MayonnEgg! I'm not the best storyteller/explainer but that's how I would fantasize the confession being explained. :P

But unlike the circumstances of a relationship I don't think Ellie would ever leave Joel. I was just explaining that.. I knew my ex was lying but I trusted him too and also didn't want to believe the alternative. But it gnawed at me and gnawed at me and it finally came out. So I think the same would happen to Ellie. But part me feels like in that moment (the end of the game) Ellie had doubts but she didn't want to know the truth from Joel. Because.. she called him out on his lie at the farmhouse and it was so unlike her to just accept Joel's answer, especially being that she was sedated and in a hospital gown. She HAD to have known something bad went down at the hospital. And the fact that she didn't ask Joel for answer makes me believe she didn't want to know. "But why then, winterlotus, did she ask Joel to swear?" Well.. maybe it was her indirect way of saying "I don't believe what you're telling me Joel but I also don't want to know the truth. So just promise me that all this goes away and you take the blame so I can feel better about this guilt." You know? Idk. Just another interpretation. The way Joel said "I swear" also was very confident. In the car when he lied to her the first time he looked upset for doing it and even hesitated right before saying it. Like he knew it was wrong. But after her confession about feeling guilty, he said "I swear" with certainty and confidence. And maybe that's because either Joel felt better about lying to her (to protect her from her own feelings) or he knew what Ellie was asking of him indirectly (to ACTUALLY lie to her since she may have known the truth).

See I don't get why people NEED a sequel! Have you seen those posts? Like.. the ending left me so satisfied because you can interpret it how you want to. Sure I felt like a little upset at first like, "what the heck is Joel doing??" But after thinking about it, I like the ending and it left me with no unaswered questions. Idk, maybe ya'll feel differently.

Like, it wasn't right Joel lied to her, but the fact that she had doubts makes the ending acceptable because we know she's good at detecting lies. It would have deviated from her character otherwise and like the devs said "it wouldn't have felt honest." And also her survivor's guilt confession makes the ending easier to accept because it solidifies the significance of Joel's lie - to protect her from the guilt. Obviously we know a lot doesn't bother Ellie and she's strong, but the ending kind of reminds us that regardless of her bada*sness, she's still fragile, naive child and looked to Joel for comfort and trust in the end. It also solidified their relationship as daughter and father because sometimes parents have to lie to protect their kids because they have more life experience and know better. They know what's right for them. To protect our innocence our parents lie to us about Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny and stuff.. So I felt like the ending was a lot like that. Someone on here I think said something like "we shouldn't say that Joel's lie was okay because it protected Ellie, as if she was emotionally-inept to handle the truth. That shouldn't justify Joel's actions and we shouldn't treat Ellie like she's a damsel." But we learn from Ellie's confession that she really wasn't able to handle the emotion that came with her situation.. It reminds us that.. she's still a child. She still needs caring for. It's not that she's emotionally-inept or can't handle the truth. But she's still a kid after all and Joel did what he felt a parent should do. That's just my opinion.

Joel lied to Ellie to protect her from her survivors guilt... In the beginning Joel puts his own life at risk for Ellie (which isn't very hard for him at that point because he doesn't really have anything that it is worth living for). Later he puts the lives of the people close to him at risk in order to save Ellie. Joel wouldn't have let Ellie die in the hospital... that was never an option. He would save her, or die trying.

And in the end, Joel even put his own relationship with Ellie at risk in order to protect Ellie from herself. So that Ellie doesn't blame herself anymore... I think that this shows that Joel didn't just act out of selfish reasons... I mean that putting his relationship with Ellie at risk in order for her to be able to start a new life was not selfish at all. The only thing that Joel really wanted is for Ellie to have a life... Because he knew that she wanted to live... even if that ment that she would have this life without him. But in the end Ellie knows what Joel did for her and she stays with him... So it really doesn't need a sequel. Joel and Ellie should have a happy life (as happy as it can get in such a fucked up world)

Yeah, I don't think what Joel did was all that selfish. I mean, if saving your loved one is selfish then it's normal to do. I feel like it would only be selfish of Joel if Ellie specifically asked to die like if she said "Joel.. should it come down to sacrificing me, I ask that you let me go. This is what I want and I need you to honor that" and he went against her wishes then I can see calling him selfish. But he didn't do that. Marlene said though, "this is what she wanted, and you know it." We KNOW that she wanted to be part of the vaccine creation, but we do NOT know that she WANTED to really be sacrificed for this. After all she was unconscious and weren't given the option to talk to her. And like repeatedly stated, if she had been awake, we know from the end of the game from Ellie's confession, that if she DID choose death then it would have been out of guilt. We know Ellie wanted to live when she talked about having a life after the whole ordeal was over. She loved life and she's young. We know she didn't WANT to die. She would have just felt obligated, like she needed to die because she felt so guilty for living and that's not a very legitimate reason for giving up your life for anything.

Obviously it's up to interpretation, but we DON'T know for certain whether or not Ellie believed Joel. The devs basically said, "we didn't think she would buy into Joel's lie. Or at least.. not so easily." And they've stated that the way the game ended is purporsefully left up to interpretation. The way that she questions Joel's answer though definitely gives us that option to decide whether she believes him or not. As most people (including myself) don't necessarily believe she bought his lie. Actually I'm half-and-half. I feel like she didn't believe him the first time he lied, but when she asked him again (after her confession) I feel like she bought or more like.. "accepted" the lie (even though she was still confused) only because she didn't want to know the truth. That's my interpretation.

While we are talking about Ellie toward the ending of the game, i just wanted to say something about her...

What do you guys think made Ellie feel so bad after she experienced the Winter chapter and after The Hospital chapter?

My thoughts are... After the winter chapter: First of all, i don't think that Ellie was so different all the time. Because Joel said that Ellie seemed extra quiet today. Probably it is the memory of David trying to rape her. But i don't think that is the whole reason... I think that Ellie experienced what she feared most... being alone. And she also feared for Joel. I mean that the chances were high that Joel could die while Ellie was imprisoned. Do you think that is the reason why Ellie says "i'm sorry. i can't imagine loosing someone that you love so much" (not Ellie's exact words) to Joel in the next chapter?

And about the ending: I guess that most of us think that Ellie was suffering from survivor's guilt. Which i also believe. But there is also something else... I think that she was depressed because she couldn't find a reason why she should keep fighting and survive. Before the Hospital Chapter, Ellie thought that the main reason that she has to survive is because of the vaccine... that was her drive. Her will to survive originated from the though that she has to "save the world". And after that... Ellie thought that she doesn't have a reason to keep fighting. She thought that she lost her purpose. As Joel says: "No matter what, you keep finding something to fight for". But that is not what Ellie wants to hear... What do you think did she want to hear from Joel?

i think ur wrong cuz it was the survivors guilt in her talking..i mean if she believes this then why does she say all those things to joel???its because she wants comfort..she wants joel to comfort her,to tell her something to relieve her from survivors guilt.She wants Joel to be on her side.

I meant that Ellie was suffering from survivors guilt, bu i think that she had also lost her reason to fight. So the question is: Was Ellie just suffering from survivors guilt or did she also loose her puropose of living? (in her mind)

I am also convinced that Ellie was suffering from survivor's guilt... i am just wondering if there is more to it than just that.

Well, at least she thinks that she has at some point... Because she was told that she is the cure for the world. So basically, at that pont it looked like Ellie was humanity's only chance to survive. Joel also thought that that was Ellie's problem "You keep finding something to fight for".

Gear3ful wrote:While we are talking about Ellie toward the ending of the game, i just wanted to say something about her...

What do you guys think made Ellie feel so bad after she experienced the Winter chapter and after The Hospital chapter?

My thoughts are... After the winter chapter: First of all, i don't think that Ellie was so different all the time. Because Joel said that Ellie seemed extra quiet today. Probably it is the memory of David trying to rape her. But i don't think that is the whole reason... I think that Ellie experienced what she feared most... being alone. And she also feared for Joel. I mean that the chances were high that Joel could die while Ellie was imprisoned. Do you think that is the reason why Ellie says "i'm sorry. i can't imagine loosing someone that you love so much" (not Ellie's exact words) to Joel in the next chapter?

And about the ending: I guess that most of us think that Ellie was suffering from survivor's guilt. Which i also believe. But there is also something else... I think that she was depressed because she couldn't find a reason why she should keep fighting and survive. Before the Hospital Chapter, Ellie thought that the main reason that she has to survive is because of the vaccine... that was her drive. Her will to survive originated from the though that she has to "save the world". And after that... Ellie thought that she doesn't have a reason to keep fighting. She thought that she lost her purpose. As Joel says: "No matter what, you keep finding something to fight for". But that is not what Ellie wants to hear... What do you think did she want to hear from Joel?

And do you agree about the "no reason to keep fighting" thing?

Very good questions. I am excited to respond :P

I agree with what you said about how Ellie felt after the winter chapter - I think she finally felt alone and it was very traumatizing for her. She's normally strong and independent, but David overpowered her and she was all alone. She almost died and it was very scary for her. The infected don't bother her too much it seems because she grew up around them, but she hasn't experienced the human-threat and that was David trying to kill her. After the hospital scene, Ellie was upset obviously because her goal - the vaccine - fell through. She was very disappointed that she couldn't be apart of making the vaccine. How she felt after the winter chapter and after the hospital chapter are two different feelings. I also had another theory as to why Ellie might have been extra quiet after the winter chapter: maybe Ellie knew that their journey was coming to an end and it reminded her of the people she felt guilty for that died in her life. Like, maybe she was feeling that survivor's guilt in that moment. And that's why when Joel said, "you know, we don't have to do this. We can go back to Tommy's." She said "it can't all be for nothing," and she wanted to continue the journey.

I think that is exactly why Joel said, "you always find something to fight for." I think Ellie lost her purpose in life, that's why Ellie said "I'm still waiting for my turn to go." Now, when I say she lost her purpose in life, it doesn't mean she really wanted to die or is going to kill herself, but she just feels disappointed that she couldn't "save the world." She was feeling so lost and guilty in that moment and it was perfect the way Joel told her that you always find something to live for, because it's true. Just because something in your life doesn't go the way it's planned doesn't mean you should just give up, and that's what Joel was telling her. She obviously didn't want to hear Joel say all that because it's like someone telling you, "look.. you need to move on, everything will be okay" whilst we're feeling down and panicky. We don't want to hear that in the heat of the moment. We want to know the truth and we want to know all the answers as to why it didn't work out! Like, people keep telling me to move on from my breakup, but I hate that! I can't just move on when I want to, I still get really emotional. And in that moment, Ellie was really emotional. What did she want Joel to tell her? That's left up to interpretation. Did she REALLY want to hear the truth? Or did she have a feeling Joel was lying and she didn't want to know the details, so she was indirectly asking him to protect her from the guilt? It's hard to say.

I originally thought that she was completely oblivious to Joel's lie and believed him and seriously wanted the truth from him. But after over-analyzing the ending over and over again, the survivor's guilt pieced a lot of the puzzle together for me. Joel originally lied to her in the car just to cover up the fact that he had lied and didn't want her to be mad at him for what he did. The second time he lied ("I swear.") was to protect Ellie from her guilt, whether she knew it or not. I think Joel felt better about lying the second time. As mentioned before, in the car when he lied he looked shameful. But the second time he lied he said it with confidence like he was doing it to help her. She had strong suspicions though that he was lying. But she never asked for details, which makes me believe that she's grateful to be alive or trusted what Joel did at the hospital but also didn't want to know details and so she accepted his answer as is - knowing very well that it COULD be a lie.

But i think that after Joel fled from the hospital, shortly before Ellie woke up, Joel looked pretty depressed and maybe a bit guilty. I think that at that moment, Joel himself was wondering if he had done the right thing. Or/And maybe he was just scared of what he would tell Ellie and how she would react... what do you think?

But i think that after Joel fled from the hospital, shortly before Ellie woke up, Joel looked pretty depressed and maybe a bit guilty. I think that at that moment, Joel himself was wondering if he had done the right thing. Or/And maybe he was just scared of what he would tell Ellie and how she would react... what do you think?

I think it was both, yeah. But I don't think he cared about the vaccine at that point. Sure it would have been nice to have a vaccine, but all he was thinking about was Ellie's safety. And I don't think he felt guilty for denying the world a vaccine, but what he felt guilty for was disappointing Ellie. "The right thing" being taking Ellie away from the situation when she wanted to make a vaccine NOT denying the world a vaccine. Does that make sense? That's my opinion. Yeah, and I'm sure he was nervous about whether Ellie would buy his story or not.

Like you said "Joel was wondering if he had done the right thing." Yeah, he was wondering if he did the right thing as far as disappointing Ellie and having to lie to her. He didn't care about the vaccine any more though. He wasn't guilty at all for taking a vaccine from the world. That's what I was trying to say.

Well here's an ethical question the 'Player' may ask himself: Is it really a better world if they defeat the Outbreak?

This reminds me of the ending to the movie Cabin in the Woods. Spoiler: For those who haven't seen it, the main girl is told to kill the pot head of the movie as a sacrifice in order for these giant god creatures who we never get to see, won't go on a rampage and destroy the whole planet. The pot head talks her out of it, saying how the world is basically full of jack asses and maybe they deserve it.

Of course this would never hold up in an ethics college class. But there are certain debates as to why the Last of Us universe is better off this way.

1. Maybe the outbreak was natures way of dealing with the human race, who wasn't respecting the planet overall. And 7 billion people is a lot and can do big damage to the earth. However nature works, the cordyceps virus was allowed to evolve to the ability of spreading through humans. And if this is any consolation, just look at the underbrush that is already growing over the cities within the 20 year time frame! Nature is rebuilding

2. People are idiots, and in this new world everyone is in it for their own survival, but at least they are complaining about annoying crap that doesn't matter. Like when Ellie sees the picture of the skinny woman and Joel tells her that she didn't eat for looks, and Ellie says that's stupid. That kind of arrogance from the mass media is destroyed after the outbreak.

3. No internet addiction, no building up mounds of student loans and 20 years at attempting to enter the work force, and no moving back in with your parents bullshit. No bullshit politics. Just blissful anarchy.

As for Joel, he got a girl pregnant at about 18, and ended up getting some sort of carpenter / architect job that he seems to hate to death from that one phone call. Plus he's working his ass off, he comes home really really late, even on his birthday, and hes having trouble paying the mortgage.

In the new world he doesn't have to worry about any of that crap. Just survival at its most basic, and yeah its scary as hell but at least it isn't mind boggling at the mental level of what it is to be a modern day slave in this type of economy.

And back then he came home so late, whos to say exactly how much time he got to spend with Sarah. But once he meets Ellie, they are more or less together 24/7. Thats family bonding that you can't get in the previous economy.

and anarchy has always been frowned upon, but it can basically be summed up as 'every man for himself'.

So as you can see, from this perspective, There are plenty of reason why Ellie should live. I personally would enjoy some sort of dystopian future like this over the current state that i am now.

Of course, if Joel & Ellie actually had a say in the matter, it couldve been open for debate a little, instead Joel is told he is basically losing his 2nd daughter right at the last minute, without his say so or her say so. But without Ellie's say so its basically the fireflies vs Joel and Joel won.

So i didnt feel too morally bad about Joel's choice, it wasn't the right choice. There are no right choices. It might not even be the best choice, but i think one day down the line Joel will be able to tell Ellie the truth and she might come to understand why its not such a bad thing.

^I'd rather deal with the shit our world is going through now than an apocalypse. Just saying. I think most people would, lol. Some think it's better, but REALLY think about it.. it's not. Always being afraid for your life. Always at risk of being attacked of being infected. Worried that if you're infected you'll hurt your loved ones. Constantly worrying about your loved ones dying. Being separated from your family. Having to worry about cannibals and hunters. Having to worry about the Fireflies attacking the last safe haven - the quarantines zones - and thus exposing everyone to the infected. Constantly having to worry about where your last meal is coming from. Having to worry about losing your humanity and becoming an animal. I'd say this world is a piece of cake compared to that world, in all honesty, come on now? lol. It's evidenced by the journal and diary entries of countless victims throughout the game. The hardships of this world is nothing compared to everything being taken from you and having to constantly worry about dying.

Can you please give me a few reasons why you would rather live in the world of The Last of Us? becuse i personally really don't get it. Imagine that you would have to kill your mother/father or daughter/son because they would be infected... Imagine loosing everything and everyone that you have ever known. Your closest friends being killed by a pack of clickers or starving. In my opinion, the world of The Last of US is a brutal place for any human being. It may be that there are way too many people on this world, but still... how could you want to live in the world of The Last of Us?

Can you please give me a few reasons why you would rather live in the world of The Last of Us? becuse i personally really don't get it. Imagine that you would have to kill your mother/father or daughter/son because they would be infected... Imagine loosing everything and everyone that you have ever known. Your closest friends being killed by a pack of clickers or starving. In my opinion, the world of The Last of US is a brutal place for any human being. It may be that there are way too many people on this world, but still... how could you want to live in the world of The Last of Us?

My point exactly. lol. I think worrying about stuff like a mortgage, getting someone pregnant, drugs, addiction, etc. are a walk in the park compared to the world of TLOU. By the way, getting someone pregnant, drugs, addiction etc. are MORE likely to happen during an apocalypse. I would also rather have society with laws rather than "blissful anarchy."

I kinda agree with Gear3ful that in the Spring chapter where Ellie seems distant, she is afraid of losing the goal that bond her and Joel together. Kinda losing the will to fight for.

Advancing further means reaching the goal (she already has the feeling that they are gonna meet fireflies), and after the goal reached, it means everything is unpredictable, and she cant bear that, well, until she saw giraffes and then become determined to reach the goal and staying with Joel after everything finished.

My opinion, about she believes Joel's lie or not is still linked on how she sees Joel, i still think she is yet to see him as a father-figure (although she already letting Joel to see her as a daughter), she still got this doubt of him which makes her very likely not to believe in Joel's lie. Her "OK" is likely an acceptance to his lie, not a confirmation to believe in it.

HOWEVER, if the scenario that Winterlotus90 wrote up there is really happened, Joel and Ellie will be true father-daughter. She wrote a really great scene dialogues that I've always wanted to happen, where Joel and Ellie become true father and daughter.

Yeah, that would be really cool to see in a DLC... or at least that is what i am hoping for.

But i think that very soon after Ellie killed David, the both of them agreed that they will stick together after all of that is over. What do you think who actually suggested that they would stay together... Joel or Ellie? (I guess that many of you probably disagree, but i think it was Ellie)

Ellie suggests it first, it's clearly showed in ranch house scene that it was Ellie who wanna stay with Joel, at that time however, she didnt want Joel to see and treat her like a kid (specifically as a daughter) but Joel is insisting that he will only see her like a daughter. That's why when Ellie said that she is not his daughter, Joel harshly said that they will go on separate ways.

And they actually already decided to stick together when Joel told her to come with him rather than with Tommy. Joel said his mind already made up, and Ellie answers that by agreeing to ride the same horse with Joel. (Ellie's expression at that scene is the proof of that, but I cant describe it with words lol). Then university and winter chapter are catalyst of their choice and chemistry.

It is then like this, after the giraffe scene, they didnt really decide again or whatever, cos they are already sticking together. So Joel simply assume they can go back to Tommy's, it was Ellie who is reassuring herself and become determined to reach the goal and whatever happen then, she will go with Joel after everything finished. So we can say she is setting herself for a new goal (which is -like you said- sticking with Joel wherever they go) after they finished with Fireflies. So my conclusion is after the giraffe scene, no one of them is suggesting that they will stay together after everything is finished, it just Ellie who reconfirm herself to keep sticking with him.

Can you please give me a few reasons why you would rather live in the world of The Last of Us? becuse i personally really don't get it. Imagine that you would have to kill your mother/father or daughter/son because they would be infected... Imagine loosing everything and everyone that you have ever known. Your closest friends being killed by a pack of clickers or starving. In my opinion, the world of The Last of US is a brutal place for any human being. It may be that there are way too many people on this world, but still... how could you want to live in the world of The Last of Us?

I brought up plenty of reasons in my previous post, but i can understand if you dont get it. It requires you toss your morals to the wind. its definetely a more dangerous world.

My last post was also written after watching a Humphrey Bogart movie called 'The Petrified Forest' , This one guy talks about how humanity wasn't respecting nature so nature was going to rise up and reclaim itself . I highly reccommend it , it has 100% on rotten tomatoes. But anyways, thats where i got the idea for Nature evolving the cordycepts for a reason.

As for the danger of the world, I was actually surprised by how many characters made it through to the end, bot main characters Joel & Ellie, as well as Bill, Tommy & his wife. Theres definetely safety precautions and survival tactics that can be learned to increase your chances of survival. Tommy's Dam got broken in by raiders, but i have no idea on earth how they got in. I think the game just skipped the part how they got in and just wanted to give you another opportunity at gameplay. I actually think Tommy's dam was pretty impenetrable.

Depends how many were still alive. If most of the people would be dead or infected, vaccine wouldn't help so much. And some people, like Tommy's group, seem to be able to manage. Infected would possibly die at some point, and if everything goes well enough, assuming people would not turn to infected or QZ zones getting "destroyed", vaccine wouldn't be that important. Assuming everything goes well. In a game where people make suicides so they will not turn to infected or get killed by remaining survivors.

Instead of making vaccines for everyone, the Fireflies could have made armor for everyone so no one could get bit. I imagine even the zombies can't bite through kevlar so the armor would be pretty lightweight. It's pretty funny this hasn't been brought up at all yet :D not that I read every word of the longest posts

To be fair it wouldn't protect against spores and "just wear something impenetrable" goes against the rules of the zombie genre

81.175.238.65 wrote:Instead of making vaccines for everyone, the Fireflies could have made armor for everyone so no one could get bit. I imagine even the zombies can't bite through kevlar so the armor would be pretty lightweight. It's pretty funny this hasn't been brought up at all yet :D not that I read every word of the longest posts

To be fair it wouldn't protect against spores and "just wear something impenetrable" goes against the rules of the zombie genre

81.175.238.65 wrote:Instead of making vaccines for everyone, the Fireflies could have made armor for everyone so no one could get bit. I imagine even the zombies can't bite through kevlar so the armor would be pretty lightweight. It's pretty funny this hasn't been brought up at all yet :D not that I read every word of the longest posts

To be fair it wouldn't protect against spores and "just wear something impenetrable" goes against the rules of the zombie genre

Uh, did you miss all those runner in the beginning (with Tess)? They'd been soldiers, and were wearing SWAT-esque armor. Certainly didn't help them.

I think that the point of the ending was to make us question ourselves and our morality. Joel in my opinion did the wrong thing, but he did the human thing. I totally agree what with someone else said earlier about we want to tell ourselves in our mind that we would have sacrificed her for humanity, but we know in our hearts it felt better saving Ellie. I don't think that humanity would be fucked if they got the vaccine. If it really worked I think that humanity would most likely go back to being completely normal. Holocaust survivors who have seen and experienced and even done horrible things have basically normal lives now. They might be traumatized and ad but they are healing and if thye commited horrible acts in the holocaust maybe even killing others for food they would never do that now. Alot of the time its the situation we are in that overpowers us. Also the world has come back from many horrifying diseases nd vaccines have helped greatly. The spanish flu at one time killed hundreds of thousands but we have vaccines now. I think the point of the game is knowing that what joel did was selfish but we understand what he did and its what we wanted to happen all along.

I take your point about Tess and Sam. Personally, I still remain in the 'humanity doesn't deserve a cure' camp. 20 years on and the Fungus has wiped out 60% of mankind, but the remaining 40% have disintegrated even further (cannibalism, looting, murder etc.). What I do find interesting though - given the debate about Joel's final actions - is that ND didn't allow the player to make the decision to save Ellie or not. The game is all the relationship between Ellie and Joel, and I think many people would have done the same as Joel, especially if given a few seconds to decide to fight on to save Ellie or to let her die.

HumanityWasn'tWorthSaving wrote:I take your point about Tess and Sam. Personally, I still remain in the 'humanity doesn't deserve a cure' camp. 20 years on and the Fungus has wiped out 60% of mankind, but the remaining 40% have disintegrated even further (cannibalism, looting, murder etc.). What I do find interesting though - given the debate about Joel's final actions - is that ND didn't allow the player to make the decision to save Ellie or not. The game is all the relationship between Ellie and Joel, and I think many people would have done the same as Joel, especially if given a few seconds to decide to fight on to save Ellie or to let her die.

I would have saved her if given the choice. However, giving the player a choice makes the story so much weaker (in my opinion)

yeah, but then again a vaccine will not really help because 60% of the world's population was turned into infected and a vaccine will not turn them to normal because they have mutated. the vaccine will only help those who are freshly bitten to not get infected. so saving ellie for this reason was good (not cosidering his love for her).

99.83.1.144 wrote:yeah, but then again a vaccine will not really help because 60% of the world's population was turned into infected and a vaccine will not turn them to normal because they have mutated. the vaccine will only help those who are freshly bitten to not get infected. so saving ellie for this reason was good (not cosidering his love for her).

I never said a vaccine would turn them to normal. That's not what a vaccine does. A vaccine prevents infection, so that if you do get bitten, you won't get infected (it wouldn't work on someone already bitten.) Implementation of a vaccine would curb the spread of the infection, so that 60% would hopefully increase less than the uninfected population.

You realize that the human race has faced devastating pandemics before, right? And we're all still here? It's not some impossible thing to come back from. If it were, then the moral ambiguity of the ending is lost, because now you're the good guy hero for saving Ellie and stopping a fruitless endeavor. The ending is complicated because Joel made a really difficult, complicated choice. Saying a vaccine would never work is basically trying to make the choice to save Ellie less complicated and easier to swallow, but that's obviously not the point of the ending.

For what it's worth it goes against all medical values and the outcome was not certain... then in that world.

It'll have taken time after they got it anyway too make it work, and there were no national/international medical services too get it around anyway, heck the Fireflies will probably just use it too gain power for themselfs... I don't trust groups like them much.

TheGroundedAviator wrote:For what it's worth it goes against all medical values and the outcome was not certain... then in that world.

It'll have taken time after they got it anyway too make it work, and there were no national/international medical services too get it around anyway, heck the Fireflies will probably just use it too gain power for themselfs... I don't trust groups like them much.

I don't think that it's really fair to expect people to follow the hippocratic oath at that level of desparation. I mean, Joel does some things that go against all moral values, but we still accept what he does, because it's survival in that world. I argue that what the fireflies were trying to do was that same kind of thing, doing something ethically dubious for survival. But instead of for personal survival, it was for the broader survival of the human species. I mean, survival of the species is hardwired into all living things, you can't blame them for trying. I'm sure none of them were exactly happy about killing a child.

See, the defeatist attitude of "well, it would have been too hard to distribute, they would have exploited it, etc" basically deflates the moral complexity of the ending. Joel shows that he's willing to sacrifice everything for Ellie, even the rest of humanity, essentially. If we all just think "well, it wouldn't have worked anyway," then that significance is lost, and Joel just killed a few more people than normal to save Ellie. Not as impactful.

TheGroundedAviator wrote:For what it's worth it goes against all medical values and the outcome was not certain... then in that world.

It'll have taken time after they got it anyway too make it work, and there were no national/international medical services too get it around anyway, heck the Fireflies will probably just use it too gain power for themselfs... I don't trust groups like them much.

I don't think that it's really fair to expect people to follow the hippocratic oath at that level of desparation. I mean, Joel does some things that go against all moral values, but we still accept what he does, because it's survival in that world. I argue that what the fireflies were trying to do was that same kind of thing, doing something ethically dubious for survival. But instead of for personal survival, it was for the broader survival of the human species. I mean, survival of the species is hardwired into all living things, you can't blame them for trying. I'm sure none of them were exactly happy about killing a child.

See, the defeatist attitude of "well, it would have been too hard to distribute, they would have exploited it, etc" basically deflates the moral complexity of the ending. Joel shows that he's willing to sacrifice everything for Ellie, even the rest of humanity, essentially. If we all just think "well, it wouldn't have worked anyway," then that significance is lost, and Joel just killed a few more people than normal to save Ellie. Not as impactful.

I'm too cynical too really care much. And I said "in this world" too mean exactly what you said... but they didn't know it it'll work.

I admit I do admire the Fireflies for caring about more then themselfs... at that point but I bet they'd probably become tyrants themselfs if they got the chance.

I was being cynical, if there was a 100% foolprooph way I would, but in that time how would you get it around the world?

I'm too cynical too really care much. And I said "in this world" too mean exactly what you said... but they didn't know it it'll work.

I admit I do admire the Fireflies for caring about more then themselfs... at that point but I bet they'd probably become tyrants themselfs if they got the chance.

I was being cynical, if there was a 100% foolprooph way I would, but in that time how would you get it around the world?

Do you think they'd give it freely?

You're setting up impossible expectations. There's never "100% foolproof" solutions to big problems like that in real life, I hate to say. That's what makes it an ethical dilemma- either way, someone is going to get hurt. It's like saying "well, unless there's a perfectly clean, 100% foolproof way to end this war without anyone getting hurt, it just has to go on forever." That's not gonna happen. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in WWII were huge tragedies, but they effectively ended the war. Some historians argue that if those measures hadn't been taken, many more would have died in the war as a result. My point being that difficult decisions have to be made sometimes where no matter what you do, something terrible will happen.

The thing is, we DON'T KNOW what would have happened if a vaccine were made. That's what makes it a great ending. Joel may have doomed humanity to save this one girl. If we just say "eh, wouldn't have worked anyway" you're taking away the weight of Joel's climactic choice.

I'm too cynical too really care much. And I said "in this world" too mean exactly what you said... but they didn't know it it'll work.

I admit I do admire the Fireflies for caring about more then themselfs... at that point but I bet they'd probably become tyrants themselfs if they got the chance.

I was being cynical, if there was a 100% foolprooph way I would, but in that time how would you get it around the world?

Do you think they'd give it freely?

You're setting up impossible expectations. There's never "100% foolproof" solutions to big problems like that in real life, I hate to say. That's what makes it an ethical dilemma- either way, someone is going to get hurt. It's like saying "well, unless there's a perfectly clean, 100% foolproof way to end this war without anyone getting hurt, it just has to go on forever." That's not gonna happen. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in WWII were huge tragedies, but they effectively ended the war. Some historians argue that if those measures hadn't been taken, many more would have died in the war as a result. My point being that difficult decisions have to be made sometimes where no matter what you do, something terrible will happen.

The thing is, we DON'T KNOW what would have happened if a vaccine were made. That's what makes it a great ending. Joel may have doomed humanity to save this one girl. If we just say "eh, wouldn't have worked anyway" you're taking away the weight of Joel's climactic choice.

True, I'm just cynic though, I don't really care much for humanity often. And I more meant would 100% work. Quite frankly the way the groups are all in for themselfs they are only in for a long slow extinction.

True the A-bombs did stop a war, even if the Jap goverment was trying too end it but had several commanders in the way and a lame-duck emporur not doing a thing for the most part. I agree, but they knew before it'll work (the nukes) they admitered on books and recorders they wern't so sure.

True we don't know. The fact is it was her body, and they had no right too exploit it as much as the cannibals had too eat it.

I'm too cynical too really care much. And I said "in this world" too mean exactly what you said... but they didn't know it it'll work.

I admit I do admire the Fireflies for caring about more then themselfs... at that point but I bet they'd probably become tyrants themselfs if they got the chance.

I was being cynical, if there was a 100% foolprooph way I would, but in that time how would you get it around the world?

Do you think they'd give it freely?

You're setting up impossible expectations. There's never "100% foolproof" solutions to big problems like that in real life, I hate to say. That's what makes it an ethical dilemma- either way, someone is going to get hurt. It's like saying "well, unless there's a perfectly clean, 100% foolproof way to end this war without anyone getting hurt, it just has to go on forever." That's not gonna happen. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in WWII were huge tragedies, but they effectively ended the war. Some historians argue that if those measures hadn't been taken, many more would have died in the war as a result. My point being that difficult decisions have to be made sometimes where no matter what you do, something terrible will happen.

The thing is, we DON'T KNOW what would have happened if a vaccine were made. That's what makes it a great ending. Joel may have doomed humanity to save this one girl. If we just say "eh, wouldn't have worked anyway" you're taking away the weight of Joel's climactic choice.

I might as well say I am REALLY bad at writing and about 80% of what I write is garbaled up shit.

I agree with you but if I were Ellie I'd not go with it out of spite of how the people of the US are in groups that care for themselfs where there are resources for all if welll distrubited but arn't out of selfishness.

I'm not American and live where people are more likely too work together in hard times rather then just look for ones self.

I might as well say I am REALLY bad at writing and about 80% of what I write is garbaled up shit.

I agree with you but if I were Ellie I'd not go with it out of spite of how the people of the US are in groups that care for themselfs where there are resources for all if welll distrubited but arn't out of selfishness.

I'm not American and live where people are more likely too work together in hard times rather then just look for ones self.

Hey don't apologize, lol. I don't care about that stuff, as long as your ideas are good!

And that's true, I certainly don't think that a vaccine would be come magical cure-all, and I think some level of corruption or difficulty with distribution is pretty likely, but it would be a step in the right direction to at least have a vaccine in existence.

And that's really interesting what you say about America vs other places. I'd say this is a pretty American game in that respect- looking out for yourself and the ones you love, and screw everyone else. I mean, that's basically what Joel did in the end. American individualism at its finest, lol.

I might as well say I am REALLY bad at writing and about 80% of what I write is garbaled up shit.

I agree with you but if I were Ellie I'd not go with it out of spite of how the people of the US are in groups that care for themselfs where there are resources for all if welll distrubited but arn't out of selfishness.

I'm not American and live where people are more likely too work together in hard times rather then just look for ones self.

Hey don't apologize, lol. I don't care about that stuff, as long as your ideas are good!

And that's true, I certainly don't think that a vaccine would be come magical cure-all, and I think some level of corruption or difficulty with distribution is pretty likely, but it would be a step in the right direction to at least have a vaccine in existence.

And that's really interesting what you say about America vs other places. I'd say this is a pretty American game in that respect- looking out for yourself and the ones you love, and screw everyone else. I mean, that's basically what Joel did in the end. American individualism at its finest, lol.

Just senstive about it... being dyslexic/austic was a big problem as a kid.

They arn't in real life (medical family in some parts) and true it would be a step that way, but I doubt the Fireflies would just "give it away", they'd use it for their own means. I've said some stuff about them before, being fools in Pittsburg and not thinking about the long term of their actions. Do you think if they got the power back too the people they'd not try too controll it?

True, and being a Kiwi is similar, just I could never 100% save myself without helping others, all those groups who "keep too themselfs" will die out in the end, the hunters are not getting bigger, they kill eact other off now and then and some die when people fight back, same weith bandits.

The thing is after most disaters mose people join together, my dad was in a big earthquake some years back and said how strangers really worked and helped out oneanother, even risking their lives.

Joel was giving her a choice, that's what bothored him about it, who knows she may go ahead with it but had no say. I doubt she 100 belived him at the end and felt "this is for another time".

^ My guess would be that the Fireflies would give the vaccine to people who joined them. And so, naturally, they would get more and more followers so they might even be able to overthrow the government...

I really don't think that they would give it away to everyone who needed it.

The world of The Last Of Us has hardened the people, it would be very hard for the ones who don't live in a quarantine zone to return to a city with a normal society.

Gear3ful wrote:^ My guess would be that the Fireflies would give the vaccine to people who joined them. And so, naturally, they would get more and more followers so they might even be able to overthrow the government...

I really don't think that they would give it away to everyone who needed it.

The world of The Last Of Us has hardened the people, it would be very hard for the ones who don't live in a quarantine zone to return to a city with a normal society.

And make even more go against them in turn, it'll be another weapon in the war. And if they did overthrow what goverment there was what will they do? Let the people who may have not had much too do with it but represent many honest people or become just like the guys they overthrew? It happened in Egypt and Libya.

Heck that doesn't happen today.

True, but Tommy did. It'll be time before all groups can, but it won't mean they could stay apart in a sense but start too trade and get what they don't have from others and vice versa.

@Gear3ful and TheGroundedAviator, I agree 100% about the Fireflies will not give everyone the vaccine and instead use it to recruit more people. "Join the Fireflies and you will be vaccinated." Poor little Ellie thinks all of the Infected will be wipe out and everyone and everything will be back to normal if she decide to go through with the surgery. It will be more chaos. Can someone explain to me why the Fireflies are attacking the Military in the first place ? All the military trying to do is protect people from the Infected, right? Yeah I know it a noob question. :)

98.67.182.141 wrote:@Gear3ful and TheGroundedAviator, I agree 100% about the Fireflies will not give everyone the vaccine and instead use it to recruit more people. "Join the Fireflies and you will be vaccinated." Poor little Ellie thinks all of the Infected will be wipe out and everyone and everything will be back to normal if she decide to go through with the surgery. It will be more chaos. Can someone explain to me why the Fireflies are attacking the Military in the first place ? All the military trying to do is protect people from the Infected, right? Yeah I know it a noob question. :)

The US Military was never designed/trained for the job it got, it's an occupation and attack force and one of the least suited for peace keeping and civil support in the world (along with Russia!). True they did try too protect the people and built the QZ's though and I'd support them, but they were not suited too managing them and became a monster, in the comic Ellie has no issue saying there were good soldiers.

I mean no disrespect too the real US Military, friends/family who've had first hand experance working with them and told me quite openly.

The Fireflies started from that and as all shit goes from sling too fan, it only gets worse as one side said /did one thing and the other did another. After all the time they had they'd expect some power after it all.

The Fireflies formed to counteract the military's abuse of power. If you remember back in Pittsburgh (where the hunters overthrew the military), Joel explains the lack of rations to Ellie in an optional conversation. He comments that lots of times, the military people would just keep the rations for themselves, letting the QZ residents starve. He adds that this has also happened in the Boston QZ before. In another optional conversation right before that, Joel comments on a dead body next to a car; he says the military killed that person because they couldn't let everyone in the QZ, and dead bodies don't become infected. You could see this as just the military protecting everyone in the QZ, but in light of the rations hoarding, it's more like the military wanting to preserve as many resources for itself while also keeping the non-military population as low as possible to prevent a coup. Well, the Pittsburgh military was overthrown anyway, and we can infer that something similar might have happened in most of the QZ's across the country: the military grew greedy and less concerned with the well-being of the QZ residents and the QZ was devastated by a coup and then decimated after the uprisen QZ inhabitants couldn't defend from the Infected or sustain themselves without a military or the chaos resulting from the coup didn't allow for a sustainable living to resume afterwards-- too much killing and power-lust and not enough concern for survival and sustainability. The Pittsburgh overthrown QZ will probably end up that way soon as well. The derelict QZ's everywhere across the U.S. reflect the military's inability to sustain the last vestiges of the American population. That's where the Fireflies tried to step in early on in the postpandemic world. They wanted to topple the military tyranny and ineptitude and reinstate a prepandemic government. Of course, the Fireflies wound up just being another militant force in the TLOU world, but they needed to be to combat the overpowered military and the hordes of fungal monsters itching to kill them. So that's why the Fireflies fight the military. I think a more viable, sustainable hope for the future of civilization is Tommy's hydroelectric community (lol, his "dam" community). If more of those pop up around the country, it would be a big step toward returning to a world similar to the one before the cordyceps pandemic. That coupled with a vaccine would be the keys to a bright future for humanity. I agree that the Fireflies would probably hoard the vaccine. Maybe it would be in better hands if Tommy's community had it instead. But they couldn't give it to just anyone either...giving vaccine to one of the crazed hunters (one of the ones that enjoys killing people and wouldn't be able to live in a peaceful community) could spell disaster because they'd just want to overthrow the dam community and abuse their usurped power by becoming a greedy dictatorship, committing atrocities on vaccine-seekers by fooling them into having hope and then just using them and killing them (sort of like how the Pittsburgh hunters lure in "tourists"). So in the end, whoever controls the vaccine would have to have the human decency to give it to innocents in need while also having the power to defend it from the wrong hands. I believe Tommy's group would have the decency, but might lack the defensive power. The Fireflies have the power for sure, but would they use the vaccine wisely? Marlene would have, I believe. But who controls the Fireflies after her death? In the postpandemic world, the many different factions and the instability of power make everything very uncertain. What is certain is that the military would abuse the vaccine. The hunters would abuse the vaccine. Cannibals like David's group would probably abuse it as well. There are decent people left in the TLOU world, but they typically aren't the ones in positions of power. If word of a vaccine spread across the country, it could further destabilize an already unstable system of survivalist factions and lead to mini-wars and even more death. But in the longterm, it would benefit humanity. Centuries in the future, people would probably look back at the cordyceps-ravaged 21st century as like a "Super Dark Ages." As the last people from the prepandemic world die out by the end of the 21st century, no one will be around who remembers the Internet or smartphones, baseball games or hotdogs, American Idol or Beyonce. The modern way of life will be as foreign to them as ancient Egyptian heiroglyphics and Stone Henge are to us. Countless scientific and technological discoveries will have been lost. 20th-century music will have been lost. Modern western culture will have been lost. No one will be around who can understand Calculus or Astronomy or Advanced Theoretical Chemistry [unless they can understand a centuries-old textbook that far in the future (if you've never noticed, most textbooks are incredibly cheaply made...they won't stand the test of time)]. No one will know how to rebuild heavy-machinery factories or start mining for more natural resources (the engineers who restored Tommy's dam were from before the pandemic...they'll pass on their knowledge to future generations, but the info will fade over time). No one will understand 90's bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden, or get pop culture references like Rob Ford jokes or Michael Jackson "boys' pants are half-off" jokes. The cordyceps pandemic is a big reset switch on humanity by Mother Nature [it started when people got it from handling infected crops...so the whole pandemic was probably an indirect result of global climate change and human overpopulation (more people means more land devoted to agriculture and crops...more commercialization means more DNA-tweaking of the crops, which could have made them more susceptible to the mutated cordyceps...or maybe even the genetic tweaking indirectly led to the mutation of the cordyceps)]. Anyways, nature has mechanisms to re-balance itself, and in the TLOU world, this resulted in the cordyceps brain infection which slashed the human population, halted human industry, and allowed the environment to breathe a sigh of relief as nature reclaimed urban/suburban areas (the TLOU nature-reclaimed disasterscapes were inspired by the 2007 book The World Without Us). (Although, the CBI still isn't great for the natural world...it just converts parts of the human population into ravenous kill-on-site super-predators...imagine the effect a zombie apocalypse would have on like the African savanna...undead zombies would hunt gazelles and elephants and lions etc. into extinction...a lion can't shoot an undead zombie in the head...it can only bite it and tear it up, but the undead zombie would keep on coming....luckily, the CBI zombies aren't undead, so lions and other sizable predators could probably stand up to them...but things like elephants and rhinos wouldn't stand much of a chance...they could only try to stampede through Infected hordes, hoping not to get bitten to death and bleed out...a zombie apocalypse would be terrible for large wild animals like giraffes...I love the part where Joel and Ellie encounter a herd of giraffes, but giraffes escaping from a zoo in the middle of a city overrun by ravenous fungal zombies probably wouldn't survive 20 years postpandemic, not to mention the hordes of starving people who would probably combat their hunger by first going after the caged animals in the zoo...easy meat...it's happened before in real life...starving crowds ate zoo animals in Europe during WWII...but I digress)

94.205.102.73 wrote:the whole idea about vaccine is wrong, you cannot make vaccine from fungi, the vaccine is used against viral or bacterial diseases , and it made from weakened or killed forms of microbe, not from fungi, I know it's a video game but it still a mistake from naughty dog , and for people who think in TLOS sequels there will be cure they are wrong it's a post -apocalypitc game , and most (if it's not all) post-apocalyptic games or movies or novels that i know there's no cure , and for TLOS it's impossible cause it's not viral or bacterial and we know that's all fiction but at least naughty dog should make more sense in their next games

Science can figure out all kinds of stuff. I'm sure an adept medical scientist could eventually figure out a way to create a vaccine for a fungus. Especially the ones who have dedicated 20 years of their lives in the postpandemic world to understanding cordyceps and its effects on humans. That part of the story isn't as unrealistic as you portray it. On a side-note, it's interesting that in the TLOU world, it was a fungus that devastated humanity, when in real life, antibiotics come from fungi. That's an interesting yin-yang/good-evil dynamic. Fungus, which is the thing that's saved humanity in the past (the discovery of penicillin in 1928 was one of the biggest medical breakthroughs in history) was the thing that decimated it nearly 100 years later in 2013. Now the Fireflies are nearly at another medical breakthrough over a century post-penicillin in 2033. Really interesting. Fungus saves people in the early 20th century and destroys them in the early 21st century.

94.205.102.73 wrote:the whole idea about vaccine is wrong, you cannot make vaccine from fungi, the vaccine is used against viral or bacterial diseases , and it made from weakened or killed forms of microbe, not from fungi, I know it's a video game but it still a mistake from naughty dog , and for people who think in TLOS sequels there will be cure they are wrong it's a post -apocalypitc game , and most (if it's not all) post-apocalyptic games or movies or novels that i know there's no cure , and for TLOS it's impossible cause it's not viral or bacterial and we know that's all fiction but at least naughty dog should make more sense in their next games

Science can figure out all kinds of stuff. I'm sure an adept medical scientist could eventually figure out a way to create a vaccine for a fungus. Especially the ones who have dedicated 20 years of their lives in the postpandemic world to understanding cordyceps and its effects on humans. That part of the story isn't as unrealistic as you portray it. On a side-note, it's interesting that in the TLOU world, it was a fungus that devastated humanity, when in real life, antibiotics come from fungi. That's an interesting yin-yang/good-evil dynamic. Fungus, which is the thing that's saved humanity in the past (the discovery of penicillin in 1928 was one of the biggest medical breakthroughs in history) was the thing that decimated it nearly 100 years later in 2013. Now the Fireflies are nearly at another medical breakthrough over a century post-penicillin in 2033. Really interesting. Fungus saves people in the early 20th century and destroys them in the early 21st century.

WOW! That made me think they say it as a way of forming "false hope", what do you think?

Heck a bit off but what you get from a snake bite can cure stuff in you as much as kill you.

141.225.74.23 wrote:The Fireflies formed to counteract the military's abuse of power. If you remember back in Pittsburgh (where the hunters overthrew the military), Joel explains the lack of rations to Ellie in an optional conversation. He comments that lots of times, the military people would just keep the rations for themselves, letting the QZ residents starve. He adds that this has also happened in the Boston QZ before. In another optional conversation right before that, Joel comments on a dead body next to a car; he says the military killed that person because they couldn't let everyone in the QZ, and dead bodies don't become infected. You could see this as just the military protecting everyone in the QZ, but in light of the rations hoarding, it's more like the military wanting to preserve as many resources for itself while also keeping the non-military population as low as possible to prevent a coup. Well, the Pittsburgh military was overthrown anyway, and we can infer that something similar might have happened in most of the QZ's across the country: the military grew greedy and less concerned with the well-being of the QZ residents and the QZ was devastated by a coup and then decimated after the uprisen QZ inhabitants couldn't defend from the Infected or sustain themselves without a military or the chaos resulting from the coup didn't allow for a sustainable living to resume afterwards-- too much killing and power-lust and not enough concern for survival and sustainability. The Pittsburgh overthrown QZ will probably end up that way soon as well. The derelict QZ's everywhere across the U.S. reflect the military's inability to sustain the last vestiges of the American population. That's where the Fireflies tried to step in early on in the postpandemic world. They wanted to topple the military tyranny and ineptitude and reinstate a prepandemic government. Of course, the Fireflies wound up just being another militant force in the TLOU world, but they needed to be to combat the overpowered military and the hordes of fungal monsters itching to kill them. So that's why the Fireflies fight the military. I think a more viable, sustainable hope for the future of civilization is Tommy's hydroelectric community (lol, his "dam" community). If more of those pop up around the country, it would be a big step toward returning to a world similar to the one before the cordyceps pandemic. That coupled with a vaccine would be the keys to a bright future for humanity. I agree that the Fireflies would probably hoard the vaccine. Maybe it would be in better hands if Tommy's community had it instead. But they couldn't give it to just anyone either...giving vaccine to one of the crazed hunters (one of the ones that enjoys killing people and wouldn't be able to live in a peaceful community) could spell disaster because they'd just want to overthrow the dam community and abuse their usurped power by becoming a greedy dictatorship, committing atrocities on vaccine-seekers by fooling them into having hope and then just using them and killing them (sort of like how the Pittsburgh hunters lure in "tourists"). So in the end, whoever controls the vaccine would have to have the human decency to give it to innocents in need while also having the power to defend it from the wrong hands. I believe Tommy's group would have the decency, but might lack the defensive power. The Fireflies have the power for sure, but would they use the vaccine wisely? Marlene would have, I believe. But who controls the Fireflies after her death? In the postpandemic world, the many different factions and the instability of power make everything very uncertain. What is certain is that the military would abuse the vaccine. The hunters would abuse the vaccine. Cannibals like David's group would probably abuse it as well. There are decent people left in the TLOU world, but they typically aren't the ones in positions of power. If word of a vaccine spread across the country, it could further destabilize an already unstable system of survivalist factions and lead to mini-wars and even more death. But in the longterm, it would benefit humanity. Centuries in the future, people would probably look back at the cordyceps-ravaged 21st century as like a "Super Dark Ages." As the last people from the prepandemic world die out by the end of the 21st century, no one will be around who remembers the Internet or smartphones, baseball games or hotdogs, American Idol or Beyonce. The modern way of life will be as foreign to them as ancient Egyptian heiroglyphics and Stone Henge are to us. Countless scientific and technological discoveries will have been lost. 20th-century music will have been lost. Modern western culture will have been lost. No one will be around who can understand Calculus or Astronomy or Advanced Theoretical Chemistry [unless they can understand a centuries-old textbook that far in the future (if you've never noticed, most textbooks are incredibly cheaply made...they won't stand the test of time)]. No one will know how to rebuild heavy-machinery factories or start mining for more natural resources (the engineers who restored Tommy's dam were from before the pandemic...they'll pass on their knowledge to future generations, but the info will fade over time). No one will understand 90's bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden, or get pop culture references like Rob Ford jokes or Michael Jackson "boys' pants are half-off" jokes. The cordyceps pandemic is a big reset switch on humanity by Mother Nature [it started when people got it from handling infected crops...so the whole pandemic was probably an indirect result of global climate change and human overpopulation (more people means more land devoted to agriculture and crops...more commercialization means more DNA-tweaking of the crops, which could have made them more susceptible to the mutated cordyceps...or maybe even the genetic tweaking indirectly led to the mutation of the cordyceps)]. Anyways, nature has mechanisms to re-balance itself, and in the TLOU world, this resulted in the cordyceps brain infection which slashed the human population, halted human industry, and allowed the environment to breathe a sigh of relief as nature reclaimed urban/suburban areas (the TLOU nature-reclaimed disasterscapes were inspired by the 2007 book The World Without Us). (Although, the CBI still isn't great for the natural world...it just converts parts of the human population into ravenous kill-on-site super-predators...imagine the effect a zombie apocalypse would have on like the African savanna...undead zombies would hunt gazelles and elephants and lions etc. into extinction...a lion can't shoot an undead zombie in the head...it can only bite it and tear it up, but the undead zombie would keep on coming....luckily, the CBI zombies aren't undead, so lions and other sizable predators could probably stand up to them...but things like elephants and rhinos wouldn't stand much of a chance...they could only try to stampede through Infected hordes, hoping not to get bitten to death and bleed out...a zombie apocalypse would be terrible for large wild animals like giraffes...I love the part where Joel and Ellie encounter a herd of giraffes, but giraffes escaping from a zoo in the middle of a city overrun by ravenous fungal zombies probably wouldn't survive 20 years postpandemic, not to mention the hordes of starving people who would probably combat their hunger by first going after the caged animals in the zoo...easy meat...it's happened before in real life...starving crowds ate zoo animals in Europe during WWII...but I digress)

Well said.

They just wern't able too do that sort of job and fucked up for it... I did mention the US Military is NOT trained for that work and so they got all controll happy. A bit off but in Afghanstain they tapped into a water table and a nearby villiages well dried up. I think it's 50/50 as too the ration thing.

As for other groups, the hunters are just a gang of thugs who got more power then they should, Pittsburg was not well handled, they started too fight before planning what to do after. The cannibals, isolation and no trade and a crazy (by his own mens words) leader. Bandits, need too say little. Fireflies, well that's militia for you, unpredictable at best and being private they usually have only a certain number of people at heart.

I do think even in that crazy world most people are still decent, Tommy left the Fireflies and joined the "dam", Joel despite him anti-hero nature stayed out of most other people hair and only delt with other scum and most in Boston were ok. Henry and Sam are examples.

As for the animals, made me think... it could be a bio-weapon gone loose? They are hard too handle and if it got out by mistake (most likely as no terrorist could have one that "great) the military would be in a bad mood.

You people keep going on and on and on about a vaccine, cure, etc., whether it would work or not, whether humanity can be saved, whether Joel was right or wrong to save Ellie, whether Marlene was right or wrong to want to sacrifice Ellie, whether Ellie would have sacrificed herself, yada yada and more yada!! Its very simple, people. As one reviewer/commenter wrote in an entry I am having difficulty rellocating, the question IS, would you sacrifice someone you love for a world full of people you don't love ? Forget all of that hokum about the vaccine. The "science" in this game is sketchy at best and wrong at worst. ND should have consulted with a reputable scientists if the technical specifics to this whole fungus backdrop were critical to the story. I posit that it is not. My personal answer to the above question is NO! I agree with Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene". Evolution is about the future - not about the past. Evolution does NOT care about the past. It forgets about them - lets them die off. And besides, if the fungus in Ellie is mutated then she has a pure form of the mutated fungus. If she had any remnant of the un-mutated fungus then she would have already succumbed to the infection. You have your "vaccine". All Ellie has to do to pass it on is o bite everyone. Reasoning, of course, based on the flawed science in the game.

173.66.207.228 wrote:You people keep going on and on and on about a vaccine, cure, etc., whether it would work or not, whether humanity can be saved, whether Joel was right or wrong to save Ellie, whether Marlene was right or wrong to want to sacrifice Ellie, whether Ellie would have sacrificed herself, yada yada and more yada!! Its very simple, people. As one reviewer/commenter wrote in an entry I am having difficulty rellocating, the question IS, would you sacrifice someone you love for a world full of people you don't love ? Forget all of that hokum about the vaccine. The "science" in this game is sketchy at best and wrong at worst. ND should have consulted with a reputable scientists if the technical specifics to this whole fungus backdrop were critical to the story. I posit that it is not. My personal answer to the above question is NO! I agree with Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene". Evolution is about the future - not about the past. Evolution does NOT care about the past. It forgets about them - lets them die off. And besides, if the fungus in Ellie is mutated then she has a pure form of the mutated fungus. If she had any remnant of the un-mutated fungus then she would have already succumbed to the infection. You have your "vaccine". All Ellie has to do to pass it on is o bite everyone. Reasoning, of course, based on the flawed science in the game.

Well said, and I think the sciance was meant too be bogus as the Fireflies are not scientests but a militia with questionable motives (like all usually).

And evolution is a thing in terms of population, not small group/individuals so it won't work.

I get the strong feeling that Ellie isn't the only person who is immune. I felt like she's immune because since she's born after the apocalypse, her body has adapted to the spore-infested atmosphere of the world, and thus she grew immune.

So this could occur to the new "children of the apocalypse", eventually it's possible that these children can grow up and lead a better world.

^ If that true then Sam and Riley would have been immune. They were born after the apocalypse too you know :) I think Anna, Ellie's mother, have something to do with her immunity. According the doctor's tape recorders, there are other immune people but they are not unique like Ellie.

I don't think anyone knows how to react, and they don't wait to see if they're immune. I mean, I wouldn't. If infected, I'd off myself very quickly. If i wait too long, then I'll lose control of myself and lose my opportunity for an easy way out. And plus, the military wouldn't listen. They'd just kill me if i showed myself to them. If Marlene wasn't a friend of Anna and hadn't promised to protect Ellie, she's have probably killed her just as fast as the military.

Dave55811 wrote:All things considered, how would a cure be proliferated throughout America & the rest of the world, anyway?

Uh, the same way Joel and Ellie made it across the country all alone? They could bring it to major QZ's? Things have spread in even more tumultuous and primitive times through history. Maybe it wouldn't work, but maybe it would. The thing is, we don't know. That's what makes the ending so ambiguous. You don't know if you did the right thing or not, or even what the right thing is. I think we're supposed to struggle a bit with it. But if you just accept "well, it'd never work anyway," you're basically just making it an easier pill to swallow.

Dave55811 wrote:All things considered, how would a cure be proliferated throughout America & the rest of the world, anyway?

Uh, the same way Joel and Ellie made it across the country all alone? They could bring it to major QZ's? Things have spread in even more tumultuous and primitive times through history. Maybe it wouldn't work, but maybe it would. The thing is, we don't know. That's what makes the ending so ambiguous. You don't know if you did the right thing or not, or even what the right thing is. I think we're supposed to struggle a bit with it. But if you just accept "well, it'd never work anyway," you're basically just making it an easier pill to swallow.

I'm sure it could work, but it's got to be something that would take long, especially since you'd be touring through the country with whatever method of transportation you can acquire, not to mention running into infected along the way....though, being in a working car would sort of alleviate the risk of infected. Oh wait.....not just infected, but also survivors ruling whatever village or city you drive by, especially if they're like the type encountered in-game in Pittsburgh who will hunt you down throughout the world just to kill you. Ergo, as I said in another thread, people are scarier than infected. )x

Dave55811 wrote:All things considered, how would a cure be proliferated throughout America & the rest of the world, anyway?

And who the hell would make it? It ain't like the days when Polio got one and any company who could would making it even worse as any druge in the US now needs a patent and is made for profit.

I figured the fireflies could since they had a whole lab and hospital and that was kind of thw whole point of what thy were trying to do but Joel kind of, you know, killed everybody there so...

And there aren't corporations or governments enforcing things like patents anymore in that world...

If it worked which is at best 50/50. I meant they'd only give it too whome they wished and not all (the polio vaccene was given freely too the USSR) people like any druge should. And it can be created in a lab but not made in the large numbers needed.

If it worked which is at best 50/50. I meant they'd only give it too whome they wished and not all (the polio vaccene was given freely too the USSR) people like any druge should. And it can be created in a lab but not made in the large numbers needed.

I meant it'll be just another weapon for power.

Yeahm it could turn out that way. But we don't know. We'll never know because Joel made the choice that he did. Maybe it had small repercussions for humanity, maybe huge, or somewhere inbetween. But it's not like what Joel did was purely heroic and good.

If it worked which is at best 50/50. I meant they'd only give it too whome they wished and not all (the polio vaccene was given freely too the USSR) people like any druge should. And it can be created in a lab but not made in the large numbers needed.

I meant it'll be just another weapon for power.

Yeahm it could turn out that way. But we don't know. We'll never know because Joel made the choice that he did. Maybe it had small repercussions for humanity, maybe huge, or somewhere inbetween. But it's not like what Joel did was purely heroic and good.

True, we'll never know and then, it's just fiction!

But considering how much work such things take I doube it'll have worked and by then it seemed the infection was thinning out, more isolated and will go away after some time, it has in the past and will again... I recon the current Ebola outbreak will be the same.

Honestly, the idea of that the Fireflies could've synthesized a vaccine from Ellie is farfetched for a few reasons. First, according to the lab recorders you find scattered throughout the hospital, not only do they not know why Ellie is immune, but they've actually been able to grow Cordyceps from her blood. If it was simply a matter of getting a sample of her unique, mutated strain, they already had it. And if they really needed a sample from her brain, it's entirely possible to do a non-fatal biopsy of brain tissue.

Second, Joel and Ellie were out, at most, for a couple of hours. You honestly believe that they were able to exhuast all other options before they decided to cut out her brain and study it? It can take days to do an indepth genetic study, which should've been a baseline so they knew what they were dealing with. Was it a unique strain that effected Ellie differently, or was it something about Ellie in particular that made her immune?

All in all, the entire situation reeks of desperation and delusion. The Fireflies had someone who was immune, and they were rushing to try and get results as quickly as possible.

98.18.115.86 wrote:Honestly, the idea of that the Fireflies could've synthesized a vaccine from Ellie is farfetched for a few reasons. First, according to the lab recorders you find scattered throughout the hospital, not only do they not know why Ellie is immune, but they've actually been able to grow Cordyceps from her blood. If it was simply a matter of getting a sample of her unique, mutated strain, they already had it. And if they really needed a sample from her brain, it's entirely possible to do a non-fatal biopsy of brain tissue.

Second, Joel and Ellie were out, at most, for a couple of hours. You honestly believe that they were able to exhuast all other options before they decided to cut out her brain and study it? It can take days to do an indepth genetic study, which should've been a baseline so they knew what they were dealing with. Was it a unique strain that effected Ellie differently, or was it something about Ellie in particular that made her immune?

All in all, the entire situation reeks of desperation and delusion. The Fireflies had someone who was immune, and they were rushing to try and get results as quickly as possible.

Well said!!!

Your right, they went corrupt fighting for a lost cause and now did lthis, another lost one.

98.18.115.86 wrote:Honestly, the idea of that the Fireflies could've synthesized a vaccine from Ellie is farfetched for a few reasons. First, according to the lab recorders you find scattered throughout the hospital, not only do they not know why Ellie is immune, but they've actually been able to grow Cordyceps from her blood. If it was simply a matter of getting a sample of her unique, mutated strain, they already had it. And if they really needed a sample from her brain, it's entirely possible to do a non-fatal biopsy of brain tissue.

Second, Joel and Ellie were out, at most, for a couple of hours. You honestly believe that they were able to exhuast all other options before they decided to cut out her brain and study it? It can take days to do an indepth genetic study, which should've been a baseline so they knew what they were dealing with. Was it a unique strain that effected Ellie differently, or was it something about Ellie in particular that made her immune?

All in all, the entire situation reeks of desperation and delusion. The Fireflies had someone who was immune, and they were rushing to try and get results as quickly as possible.

From Marlene's recorder:

"I just finished speaking... More like yelling at our head surgeon. Apparently there's no way to extricate the parasite without eliminating the host."

That's the internal logic of the (fictional) disease. You're bringing in outside information on a disease we pruposely don't know a lot about, because it only exists in the game to provide the gravity of Joel's choice. The vaccine has to be viable or else the whole weight of the ending falls apart. There's nothing in the game to make you conclude "oh, this 100% wouldn't work anyway."

Druckman said,

"As for the whole ending...I've heard you talk about how some plot points are cliched, and the one that probably bugs us the most is Ellie being immune. And the only reason that's in there is so you could get that choice in the end. There's this progression of character for Joel, and how far is he willing to go for Ellie? It progresses from like, willing to put his life on the line, willing to put his friends on the line, and eventualy he's willing to put his soul on the line, and he's willing to sacrifice all of humanity."

If it never would have worked anyway, he's not actually sacrificing anything, then. Certainly not all of humanity, or his soul.

And this point has been made many times in this thread. I know it's a long thread but at least read some of it before posting. Common forum courtesy.

Except, the recorders also state that they were able to grow Cordyceps from her blood. In other words, they had a sample of the fungus directly from Ellie ready to go. That's not bringing in 'outside information'. I don't think the vaccine not being viable effects the weight of Joel's choice to save Ellie at all. Because throughout the entire game, Joel was highly skeptical of the idea in the first place. Even if they -could- have made a vaccine from Ellie, from Joel's perspective, it was about trading Ellie's life just for the slim possibility that they might be able to get -something- out of it. Joel lived through the outbreak, He remembers all the botched attempts at creating a cure.

98.18.115.86 wrote:Except, the recorders also state that they were able to grow Cordyceps from her blood. In other words, they had a sample of the fungus directly from Ellie ready to go. That's not bringing in 'outside information'. I don't think the vaccine not being viable effects the weight of Joel's choice to save Ellie at all. Because throughout the entire game, Joel was highly skeptical of the idea in the first place. Even if they -could- have made a vaccine from Ellie, from Joel's perspective, it was about trading Ellie's life just for the slim possibility that they might be able to get -something- out of it. Joel lived through the outbreak, He remembers all the botched attempts at creating a cure.

But I mean, you're making assumptions that them being able to grow cordycepts from her blood means they could have made a vaccine from that. Obviously not, since they determined they had to operate on her. There's nothing in the recorders to suggest they didn't know what they were doing. In fact, going through the university lab, we're purposefully shown evidence that they've been studying this thing for years, waiting for their big break. Then, Ellie is that big break. This is a fake disease, the science of it is flimsy and vague to begin with. I just don't think we're supposed to microanalyze the science jargon in these recorders. They're just there to deliver the message: "We can do this, but unfortunately the kid has to die in the process." It's like a small little voice of logic being thrown in among Joel's highly emotional "gotta save mah baby girl!" state.

You're absolutely right about Joel's perspective. But OUR perspective as players, that's a different story. We're partial stand-ins for Joel, but we're also supposed to interpret his decisions after the fact from a distance, especially considering we play that last chapter as Ellie.

I just finished another play through, and came across this thread, which has a lot of great ideas and excellent discussion. One question I asked myself after finishing the game a second time, was "Would Joel be shaped differently if Sarah had died in a different way?" Would that in any way have affected his decision making in the end, and generally his entire outlook on things over the 20+ years since his daughter died?

Bill says to Joel something like "I'm not as worried about the Infected because they are at least predictable, what scares me are the humans." Then he says, "I would think you would understand that better than anyone". Meaning because it was a human soldier that killed Sarah, and not an Infected, that Joel would be more discontent with humanity.

If Sarah had been killed by an Infected instead (The possibility of her becoming infected and then predicting the events seemed like going too far down a rabbit hole, so I am not considering that for the purposes of this post), do you think that would have changed Joel's development? Would he have felt differently about the Infection, effectively blaming it instead of humanity for the death of his daughter?

I don't think that there's any doubt that Joel believes that the majority of humanity doesn't deserve to be saved. That's the whole point of his conversation with Ellie when she lists all the people for whose deaths she feels responsible. Joel doesn't consider her to have any moral responsibility at all and this difference of viewpoint certainly would effect how they both would view the events in the hospital.

The thing to remember is that conclusion of the scientists' work on Ellie's blood was that she wasn't immune. There was just something about her that meant the Cordyceps couldn't take her over. The logical place to look is her brain as that's where the fungus's central 'core' grows.

The big problem is that the Fireflies' scientists were in a hurry for some reason. There are methods - low-tech methods - that would have enabled them to explore the biochemistry of what is going on in there without killing Ellie. Cutting out her brain is the 'quick and dirty' way of doing it. My concern is that the method they chose was more likely to destroy the very data that they needed.

What they were probably hoping to do is work out what combination of chemicals can be used to prevent Cordyceps to establish itself in the recently-infected - a cure, in other words. In the long term, this could have led to a fungicidal treatment that would make areas no-go zones for Infected but I can't see how it could be used to produce a vaccine.

As I say, though, they were in a hurry. It makes sense for this to be so. The records show they were working on this for years with only minimal progress and a lot of dashed hopes. On a human level, this leads to anguish, desperation and fear. Ellie was so different from the other Immunes they studied that I think they succumbed to their desperation and fear and acted hastily, assuming that she was the missing piece they always needed. I'm sure they were all intelligent enough to be able to construct scientific reasons for their conclusions but I'm unconvinced that a team not on the verge of giving up in despair would have come to the same conclusions.

To me, whether or not Ellie really was the key to the cure is irrelevant (although it could become a plot issue in any sequel game). What matters is that, as best as Joel can tell she might be that key and that everyone who has been looking for this for years thinks she is that key. He doesn't care. The human race can hang itself as far as he's concerned - the majority have shown they aren't morally worthy of survival anyway, in his eyes (and I suspect that he includes himself in that group). To him, Ellie deserves life more than the rest of the world and he intends to see to it she gets what she deserves.

Because, after all the evil he's done in his life, if he can do this one last good thing...? Well, then he can go to hell laughing.

98.18.115.86 wrote:Except, the recorders also state that they were able to grow Cordyceps from her blood. In other words, they had a sample of the fungus directly from Ellie ready to go. That's not bringing in 'outside information'. I don't think the vaccine not being viable effects the weight of Joel's choice to save Ellie at all. Because throughout the entire game, Joel was highly skeptical of the idea in the first place. Even if they -could- have made a vaccine from Ellie, from Joel's perspective, it was about trading Ellie's life just for the slim possibility that they might be able to get -something- out of it. Joel lived through the outbreak, He remembers all the botched attempts at creating a cure.

But I mean, you're making assumptions that them being able to grow cordycepts from her blood means they could have made a vaccine from that. Obviously not, since they determined they had to operate on her. There's nothing in the recorders to suggest they didn't know what they were doing. In fact, going through the university lab, we're purposefully shown evidence that they've been studying this thing for years, waiting for their big break. Then, Ellie is that big break. This is a fake disease, the science of it is flimsy and vague to begin with. I just don't think we're supposed to microanalyze the science jargon in these recorders. They're just there to deliver the message: "We can do this, but unfortunately the kid has to die in the process." It's like a small little voice of logic being thrown in among Joel's highly emotional "gotta save mah baby girl!" state.

You're absolutely right about Joel's perspective. But OUR perspective as players, that's a different story. We're partial stand-ins for Joel, but we're also supposed to interpret his decisions after the fact from a distance, especially considering we play that last chapter as Ellie.

You're missing the point. According to Marlene, the entire point of the surgery was to extract the fungus from Ellie's brain so they could create a vaccine.

there's no way to extricate the parasite without eliminating the host

So; You have the doctors telling Marlene that they need to perform fatal surgery to get a sample of the fungus and to make the vaccine, while at the same time on his private logs the head doctor admits that he doesn't know why Ellie is immune and that he -already has- a sample of the fungus that he's grown from her blood.

You're missing the point. According to Marlene, the entire point of the surgery was to extract the fungus from Ellie's brain so they could create a vaccine.

there's no way to extricate the parasite without eliminating the host

So; You have the doctors telling Marlene that they need to perform fatal surgery to get a sample of the fungus and to make the vaccine, while at the same time on his private logs the head doctor admits that he doesn't know why Ellie is immune and that he -already has- a sample of the fungus that he's grown from her blood.

The contradiction should be obvious.

I just figured what was in Ellie's brain was different from what they had grown in the lab, otherwise why go along with the surgery in the first place? These aren't evil mustache-twirling villains, I don't think they were gleeful at the idea of killing Ellie either. Marlene even says to Joel in the hospital room something along the lines of the virus having "somehow mutated" in her brain. I think that's what they were talking about getting to. Like, the sample they grow from her blood is just normal cordycepts (which is consistent since she set off the scanner at the beginning as well), but what's in her brain is whatever stopped it from corrupting her that they're after. That's what I figured, anyway. And she uses the word choice of "parasite" which also leads me to believe that what they're after in the surgery is different from what they've grown in the lab.

I just think we're over-analyzing this one sentance in an optional collectible rather than looking at the larger message of the story. Again, if the whole vaccine was 100% not viable, then Joel didn't really sacrifice anything in the end. He certainly didn't put humanity or his soul on the line, like Neil said. He killed the "bad guys" who were trying to murder a little girl. It deflates the moral complexity of the ending.

I think that you're forgetting the human factor: After twenty years of failure, they're grasping at straws based on the anomaly that Ellie represents. They're making hasty choices in the name of that most dangerous and deceptive of gifts, hope.

BenRG wrote:I think that you're forgetting the human factor: After twenty years of failure, they're grasping at straws based on the anomaly that Ellie represents. They're making hasty choices in the name of that most dangerous and deceptive of gifts, hope.

The thing is, we don't know. Obviously, the fireflies were not working under the best of conditions (it's an apocalypse after all) and they were desperate. But so was Joel. They're all flawed human beings, and as the conversation with Marlene in the garage shows- they're both using Ellie for their own reasons. I just don't buy that there's some secret interpretation of one sentance in some recorder you can optionally find that is going to give you the definitive answer "this will definitely work," or "it definitely won't" and therefore change the entire tone of the ending. That ambiguity is what makes the ending so complex. If we claim to know it definitely wouldn't work, then the whole "holy crap, Joel may have just doomed humanity" thing dissolves.

Neil Druckmann: it came down to the fact that we’re trying to say this very specific thing, showing what lengths someone would go to to save his daughter. And the sacrifice keeps getting bigger and bigger. And by the end, he decides, I’m going to sacrifice all of mankind.

If the vaccine definitely wouldn't have worked, then the player can sleep soundly now knowing that Joel didn't really sacrifice all of mankind. If you haven't, I'd suggest reading more into the first half of this thread.

You keep on forgetting that Neil is talking about Joel's decision based on what he knows. There is no reason to believe that this is the objective reality of the game world, only that this is the choice Joel makes to the best of his own knoweldge.

BenRG wrote:You keep on forgetting that Neil is talking about Joel's decision based on what he knows. There is no reason to believe that this is the objective reality of the game world, only that this is the choice Joel makes to the best of his own knoweldge.

I'm not forgetting anything, Neil isn't just talking about Joel. We don't know anything more about the vaccine than Joel does. There's nothing to suggest that we're somehow supposed to think "oh, well Joel is too dumb and uneducated to understand the science jargon in this recorder, but luckily I do! It means this vaccine 100% won't work!" why would they want to facilitate that disconnect- in the climax of the game, no less! The PLAYER still has to think that Joel may have sacrificed all of mankind as well, in order for them to feel the ambiguity meant for the ending (we play as Joel, his choices are "ours" in a sense.) We gun through that hospital and carry Ellie down that hallway. It's not like we have this perfectly passive separation from Joel. The player is who the whole story is being made for. There's just no smoking gun in the game that will definitively tell you "this vaccine would 100% work/not work," any more than you knowing 100% what Ellie's "okay" means.

No, they're not our choices at all. The minute the game becomes a railroad track shooter through the Firefly base, if we want to finish the game, we have to let Joel do as he wishes, irrespective of our feelings or understanding of the Fireflies' actions. I agree with those reviewers who say that this was a deliberate act on Naughty Dog's part to force us to confront the fact that this man, in whose shoes we have spent hours, is not a good man and that sometimes heroes, by necessity, cannot be good men.

Besides, you keep on thinking that this is something in the foreground. It isn't. It's an easter egg to reward the player for looking more deeply into what is happening in the game.

You're missing the point. According to Marlene, the entire point of the surgery was to extract the fungus from Ellie's brain so they could create a vaccine.

there's no way to extricate the parasite without eliminating the host

So; You have the doctors telling Marlene that they need to perform fatal surgery to get a sample of the fungus and to make the vaccine, while at the same time on his private logs the head doctor admits that he doesn't know why Ellie is immune and that he -already has- a sample of the fungus that he's grown from her blood.

The contradiction should be obvious.

I just figured what was in Ellie's brain was different from what they had grown in the lab, otherwise why go along with the surgery in the first place? These aren't evil mustache-twirling villains, I don't think they were gleeful at the idea of killing Ellie either. Marlene even says to Joel in the hospital room something along the lines of the virus having "somehow mutated" in her brain. I think that's what they were talking about getting to. Like, the sample they grow from her blood is just normal cordycepts (which is consistent since she set off the scanner at the beginning as well), but what's in her brain is whatever stopped it from corrupting her that they're after. That's what I figured, anyway. And she uses the word choice of "parasite" which also leads me to believe that what they're after in the surgery is different from what they've grown in the lab.

I just think we're over-analyzing this one sentance in an optional collectible rather than looking at the larger message of the story. Again, if the whole vaccine was 100% not viable, then Joel didn't really sacrifice anything in the end. He certainly didn't put humanity or his soul on the line, like Neil said. He killed the "bad guys" who were trying to murder a little girl. It deflates the moral complexity of the ending.

They aren't villians? Sure, but they aren't good guys either. We know they've been heavily involved in human experimentation over the last couple of years trying to find a cure, with no progress. Add in the fact that they are basically a terrorist organization who've seemingly been driven out of most major cities by the military, and the idea that they would be so desperate to make some sort of advancement in their research that they'd murder a little girl on the off chance they could get something from it doesn't sound farfetched at all.

And that makes no sense. A virus, fungus or bacteria in one part of the body isn't going to be different than what you find in another part of the body. Ellie isn't going to have one strain of Cordyceps in her blood, while having another in her brain. You're ignoring the disconnect to preserve your interpretation of how you think the ending should be. The recorders make it obvious that the doctors didn't know why Ellie was immune, or why her strain of the fungus behaved so differently. They -didn't know-. If they don't even know these things, then how in the world can they be so sure they'll be able to make a vaccine? They don't. They are -desperate-. They've spent years doing depraved research in the off chance of finding a cure, and they've failed every time.

Then here comes a little girl who is immune to the disease, and they are so desperate for something that they are willing to kill her to study everything about her just on the off-chance that it could contribute to a cure.

98.18.115.86 wrote:First, according to the lab recorders you find scattered throughout the hospital, not only do they not know why Ellie is immune, but they've actually been able to grow Cordyceps from her blood. If it was simply a matter of getting a sample of her unique, mutated strain, they already had it. And if they really needed a sample from her brain, it's entirely possible to do a non-fatal biopsy of brain tissue.

Wait, wait wait, where the heck did it say that they were able to grow Cordyceps from her blood?

One of the lab recorders in Salt Lake City. The doctor says that they took a sample of Ellie's blood and, when they cultured it, the Cordyceps spores in it grew normally. They also found nothing in her blood to indicate her body's immune system was fighting the fungus and destroying it.

I don't know, despite what everyone is saying to the contrary - that the vaccine wouldn't have worked anyway - I still believe there's stronger evidence that it would have worked. Or even if it didn't work and they manufactured the vaccine wrong, that she was still the answer. Because, isn't she the ONLY one ever to have been immune? I know they tried creating vaccines with other people, but does that mean they were immune also? Or just that the fungal infection acted different in their bodies which prompted scientists to try and make a vaccine but ultimately they died anyway (from the infection not the surgeries)? I haven't re-played the game in a while so I forgot what the recordings said.

But yeah, like MayonnEgg said, just assuming that the vaccine absolutely wouldn't have worked, takes away the weight of the Joel's decision to save Ellie and sacrificing mankind for her. You know? Like Joel's lies wouldn't really have been lies then. The conversation between them in the end would have been different too, like Joel would have said things like "I found a recorder in the hospital that said they didn't know why you were immune, so there's a high chance they didn't know what they were doing and that's why I saved you." But regardless, they knew Ellie was different than EVERYONE else they studied. And that was enough for the scientists to be convinced that she was the answer, regardless of whether or not they knew how the fungus had mutated in her brain. Plus, they can't just stare at her and study what's going on.. they did tests and realized the fungus was acting differently inside of her and based on those tests, she was different from anyone else they had studied. And they studied a LOT of people. They had seen a bunch of different things. And they were convinced Ellie was the answer, but in reality what they were going to do was extract the infection, study how it works, and then produce a vaccine from it. I guess there's a chance that through studying it, they kill the infection by killing the host (Ellie) and they can't study how it grows and how it's mutating. And I guess there's a chance that after studying it, they don't have the means the manufacture a vaccine. Or there's a chance it turns out like the AIDS virus, where they know how it works but they just can't figure out how to make a vaccine for it. There are people immune to the AIDS virus, and we've studied them, and we still can't figure out a vaccine. All of that is possible, but regardless, within the game, we're convinced that Ellie is the answer which is all that matters. Anything after that, in hindsight, is headcanon.

Regardless of whether or not the vaccine or its distribution was plausible or whether it would have really made a difference, Ellie was different than everyone else. And the tests performed on her gave scientists more clues into figuring how the infection worked than anyone else in 20 years. She was the light. And the Fireflies were going to follow that light all the way to the end.

It doesn't take away Ellie being special at all. What it means is that what happens to her isn't an immune response at all but something else. She's still The Miracle Girl, it's just that the miracle is in a genetic and/or biochemical rather than immunological form.

I still maintain a cure (something that stops someone who has been infected from Turning) could be possible from finding out what it is that stops the Cordyceps from taking her over. Probably a variant enzyme in her brain chemistry or something. A vaccine, however, is a specific product requiring specific resources that simply aren't available, given the nature of her immunity.

You're missing the point. According to Marlene, the entire point of the surgery was to extract the fungus from Ellie's brain so they could create a vaccine.

there's no way to extricate the parasite without eliminating the host

So; You have the doctors telling Marlene that they need to perform fatal surgery to get a sample of the fungus and to make the vaccine, while at the same time on his private logs the head doctor admits that he doesn't know why Ellie is immune and that he -already has- a sample of the fungus that he's grown from her blood.

The contradiction should be obvious.

I just figured what was in Ellie's brain was different from what they had grown in the lab, otherwise why go along with the surgery in the first place? These aren't evil mustache-twirling villains, I don't think they were gleeful at the idea of killing Ellie either. Marlene even says to Joel in the hospital room something along the lines of the virus having "somehow mutated" in her brain. I think that's what they were talking about getting to. Like, the sample they grow from her blood is just normal cordycepts (which is consistent since she set off the scanner at the beginning as well), but what's in her brain is whatever stopped it from corrupting her that they're after. That's what I figured, anyway. And she uses the word choice of "parasite" which also leads me to believe that what they're after in the surgery is different from what they've grown in the lab.

I just think we're over-analyzing this one sentance in an optional collectible rather than looking at the larger message of the story. Again, if the whole vaccine was 100% not viable, then Joel didn't really sacrifice anything in the end. He certainly didn't put humanity or his soul on the line, like Neil said. He killed the "bad guys" who were trying to murder a little girl. It deflates the moral complexity of the ending.

They aren't villians? Sure, but they aren't good guys either. We know they've been heavily involved in human experimentation over the last couple of years trying to find a cure, with no progress. Add in the fact that they are basically a terrorist organization who've seemingly been driven out of most major cities by the military, and the idea that they would be so desperate to make some sort of advancement in their research that they'd murder a little girl on the off chance they could get something from it doesn't sound farfetched at all.

And that makes no sense. A virus, fungus or bacteria in one part of the body isn't going to be different than what you find in another part of the body. Ellie isn't going to have one strain of Cordyceps in her blood, while having another in her brain. You're ignoring the disconnect to preserve your interpretation of how you think the ending should be. The recorders make it obvious that the doctors didn't know why Ellie was immune, or why her strain of the fungus behaved so differently. They -didn't know-. If they don't even know these things, then how in the world can they be so sure they'll be able to make a vaccine? They don't. They are -desperate-. They've spent years doing depraved research in the off chance of finding a cure, and they've failed every time.

Then here comes a little girl who is immune to the disease, and they are so desperate for something that they are willing to kill her to study everything about her just on the off-chance that it could contribute to a cure.

You made a lot of good points. But it's true that you can have different strains of infections in your body. Plantar Warts and Common Warts are two different strains of the HPV virus that affect two completely different areas of the body. Plantar Warts only occur on the feet while Common Warts occur on the hands and elbows primarily. It seems that in TLOU, they were concerned with the strain that had mutated in her brain because it wasn't killing her (wait whoever said she had other strains of a fungal infection in her body? We know cordyceps infects peoples brains, so why would it be in her blood?). Another example would be, Tinea pedis (athlete's foot) which affects the feet, and Tinea cruris (jock itch) which affects the groin. Two different strains of the same fungus affect different areas of the body. So it's normal for our bodies to contain all kinds of different strains from the same species of bacteria or virus or fungus. So Ellie could very well have two different strains of Cordyceps in her body, but the one we're concerned with in the game is the one in her brain.. you know.. the one everyone is dying from.

And while I agree that the Fireflies were desperate to find a cure, and while I agree that killing a young girl hastily for a cure fits in with them being an outcasted terrorist-type group, it still doesn't dismiss the fact that the Fireflies are trying to find a cure and that according to their studies, Ellie is different from everyone they've ever studied and her condition gave them a reason to study her and make a vaccine. The chance that she had for saving the world was very high. Maybe no so much in the possibility of making it and distributing it with the limited supplies they had, but just in the fact that she was DIFFERENT. Which gave them hope. Joel knew it too. Even telling Ellie, "Do you even realize how important your life is? Running off like that, putting yourself at risk. That was pretty goddamned stupid."

Also, is it possible that, in the recorder, when they say "Blood cultures taken from the patient rapidly grow Cordyceps in fungal-media in the lab..." that they mean they're taking blood samples and ADDING it to fungal cultures to see if they grow in her blood or if her immune blood would "kill" the spores (i.e. her blood doesn't actually contain cordycepts)? In this case, it explains why they need to go to her brain- since the fungus was able to grow in her blood samples, the key to her immunity wasn't in her blood, but in her brain.

You're ignoring the disconnect to preserve your interpretation of how you think the ending should be.

I'm not ignoring anything because I'm not convinced that one sentence among a bunch of science jargon in one OPTIONAL recorder is some smoking gun for how to interpret the entire game's ending. And btw, "how I think the ending should be" is lifted directly from Neil Druckmann. You know, the creator of this game we're all arguing about. Literally all I'm arguing is that the ending is meant to be ambiguous and open. We're not given definitive answers one way or the other.

There's the problem: It's not 'optional'. Only with all collectables do you get the full back-story. That's why they're there. Don't be intimidated by the 'jargon' either. I'm no expert but I was able to figure it out!

But it's not just a backstory, it would change the whole ending of the game. In any case, I think that a vaccine could work. The scientists in The Last Of Us know alot more about the cordyceps than we do after all... So I don't think that we should fool ourselves into believing that we know more about it than they do...

As another potential benefit (if the vaccine works) presumably it would work by eliminating the traces of the fungal infection. So...if we think about it another way...perhaps in time it might not just be a 'vaccine' but for those who are "too far gone" it could be weaponised. The infected are basically animated and powered by the growing fungal infection, over time perhaps they could even develop some form of vapour or gas to flood the heavily infected underground areas or the spore-ridden areas which would destroy the fungal infections.

I don't think there's any indication that they couldn't engineer a cure, I do think it's people's wishful thinking to justify the endgame actions of Joel. However there's nothing that really suggests it would work either way other than the informed opinion of the scientists at Firefly HQ. We shouldn't assume it'd automatically work or it'd automatically fail either way.

Joel's decision was in my opinion not morally right... (I still support his deciion though)

As Marlene said, it isn't about Joel or herself (Marlene), and it's not even about Ellie. If you think about it, sacrificing one life to save millions would seem morally right...

The thing is that no matter which side you are on, there is no clear cut good/bad right/wrong thing here...

While it would be cruel to kill an innocent kid (or teenager), you shouldn't forget about the hundreds of thousands (probably millions) lives that a vaccine could save (among those lives are also countless kids...). So I wouldn't say that Marlene's plan was morally wrong...

How much do you want to bet that this cure that the Fireflies claimed to have would've actually not done anything at all? Of course, this is something I thought up just now; it was probably some brain-fart that happened when I woke up an hour ago. The reason I say this is because, as far as I know, there is no cure or remedy for regular cordyceps (the real-life one we should all be familiar with by now), especially since there is a theory that cordyceps is a countermeasure wielded by Mother Nature. However, I did read that ophiocordyceps unilateralis can itself be attacked by a "hyperparasite" which can serve as an "anti-zombie-fungus fungus"; it is because of this that most ophiocordyceps unilateralis formations actually don't create spores, thus sparing plenty of ants in a colony (for example). But then again, I think this "anti-zombie-fungus fungus" is a natural thing in nature....in otherwords, not something manmade.

But then again, CBI is a type to infect humans, and though we don't know about its origins (aside from being a mutant strain that infected crops in South America), I would think a remedy could be reverse-engineered from someone infected with CBI. Problem is that, from the sound of things, proper research into a vaccine requires a pristine, living specimen, and the specimen will have to die, since the infection resides within the cerebrum (brain).....evidently they can't just use cerebrospinal fluid, either; they have to cut the brain up (or dissect it, but you get what I mean). I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that research into a cure for CBI is not only just a response for the survival of the human race, but also because humans are easier to research than insects, and as this Wikia said, humans are easier to dissect and what-not.

Aside from our hypothesis of a vaccine for CBI, what if CBI was prone to a hyperparasite like the one I described above? That would make for some interesting lore.....but it may not be worth exploring, especially if its potential was only to stop CBI formations from creating spore dispersal.

CaPtiAn1590 wrote:Hmmm.. you know what if they could just take a blood sample of Ellie. If the fungus strains also flow through the body's fluids couldn't they just take a sample of the blood and get a sample to the strain that way.

Plus just out of couriosity; if the doctors were performing surgery on her and they got her blood on them wouldn't they transact the fungus onto them as well infecting the doctors!

I guess so. But what they probably want (me speculating again :D) is the core, if that's what its called, since the fungus travels through the bloodstream and into the brain until it settles there. It's the fungal lump that happens to grow in the brain just like some parasitic worms in Africa. However, in Ellie's case, the fungus INSIDE HER BRAIN is dormant and that is probably what they want.

About the surgeon being infected, I don't think that's how you get infected. You get infected by inhaling spores or getting it in your bloodstream. So as long as they don't have an open wound (this is what happened to sam) or get bitten, they're good. You can actually find an artifact that explains all this on the first part of the game inside a truck.

Ahhh i see. But i is still logical because that would be a real life senerio.

And about the surgeons if you notice all they wear is a mask and surgeons outfit (and gloves) but alot of their skin is revealed and appears to have cuts and bruises (but could be just texture's in game) if you look closely so there would of had definatly been a problem. LOL

Their bruises could just be textures too.

Afterall, I think they know what they're doing since they survived this long experimenting on the infected without getting themselves infected too. The recorder in the university said they've been doing this for the past 5 years and sometimes there's progress and sometimes there's none. Too bad the dude got bit by a test monkey and got infected too (in another recorder just outside the last room). Lol

Saddest part of all... it was by a monkey.

Is that a possible referance to this movie I was watching? I think it was 28 Days later? This rage virus that akes people rage filled zombies gets spread when a bunch of infected chimps bite a bunch of scientists and animal rights activists.

94.205.102.73 wrote:the whole idea about vaccine is wrong, you cannot make vaccine from fungi, the vaccine is used against viral or bacterial diseases , and it made from weakened or killed forms of microbe, not from fungi, I know it's a video game but it still a mistake from naughty dog , and for people who think in TLOS sequels there will be cure they are wrong it's a post -apocalypitc game , and most (if it's not all) post-apocalyptic games or movies or novels that i know there's no cure , and for TLOS it's impossible cause it's not viral or bacterial and we know that's all fiction but at least naughty dog should make more sense in their next games

I've never played the game, but read up on the ending and saw it on youtube, so perhaps my point of view will be unwelcome, however there are two points about the science, as I understand it, that don't make sense. First, if the Fireflies wanted to make a cure by sampling the plant, they had no need to remove Ellie's brain. They could have drilled a whole in her head and taken a sample without removing the brain or causing irreperable damage. This is not an impossible proceedure for a group who has been performing medical experiments for a long time. Secondly, if Ellie herself was the cure, then the genetic information would, indeed, have existed anywhere in her body, not just her brain, and if it did only exist in her brain, a biopsy of the non-critical parts of her brain could have been performed and studied. The option of "she must die in surgery" is just a literary trick to make the decision have a more weighted impact.

Now, again, not having playted the game but going from my own honest emotion, I would have done what Joel did. The choice between 'humanit', the faceless masses, or your own serrogate daughter? Yes, I would have killed anyone who threatened her and done so with extreme prejudice. If faced with the prospect of doing harm to a dozen people you have never met and will never see or doing harm to someone you love, only someone who is psychotic would sacrifice their loved one if that loved one is threatened. Does this make Joel a hero? No, not by a long sight. It does, however, make him very human, and that is excellent story-telling.

Really wish I read the comments and post before I made my video :S. Excellent contributions from everyone!

I made a video critically evaluating what Joel did in the end and many of you have an indepth knowledge of the ending so who better to ask. Could you guys watch my video and give me some feedback? I defo think it is lacking in some areas and I want to make a better version which incorporates more discussion. I would be eternally greatful if you guys could do that. Need third party LOU fans that know the ending to give me some criticisms and comments.

The confusion between Marlene and the Surgeon's discussion make it difficult to assess whether the surgery would result in Ellie's demise. Joel, being a non-scientific character (he did not know how the hydroelectric dam worked), was acting with the information and understanding he had at hand. Would Ellie have to die in surgery? Marlene assumes yes (1). Joel assumes yes (2). Surgeon contradicts himself (3). See below.

2. Joel made his own assumption that the fungus was growing on Ellie's brain during a cutscene with Marlene ("...but it grows all over the brain"), but the MRI note shows no signs of growth.

3. Surgeon says they grew Cordyceps from the blood samples so they have already extricated the parasite "without eliminating the host" (assuming "fungi" is interchangeable with "parasite" in this context), contrary to what was discussed with Marlene.

IMHO, Joel made the correct decision as a long-time survivor. Love does not need to factor into this decision. If he lets Ellie go, his chance of survival is lowered greatly, and she dies 100% with no guarantee of benefit to anyone. If Joel keeps her, both their chances of survival are increased. If we go on a limb, there's potential for future reproduction using Ellie's genes possibly conferring immunity to her kids, should she find another kid like Sam.

It's tough to find teenage girls that would skewer a grown man from behind (twice) then make a salad with his head and a machete. They don't teach those things in home economics these days.

From surgeon's recorder: "Blood cultures taken from the patient rapidly grow Cordyceps in fungal-media in the lab... "

Aren't they most likely talking about ADDING Ellie's blood sample to fungal media to test if it will grow spores (ie. to see if the secret to her immunity lies in her blood?) They're not saying that her blood itself contains cordycepts, but that there's nothing in her blood preventing the growth of it. Otherwise why wait to see them "grow?" They could just, y'know, test her blood for the presence of cordycepts. In fact, why not just say "blood samples test positive for cordycepts" if that's what they meant?

There is so much debate about the vaccine, Joel's decision to save Ellie, and so on. The one thing I've never seen anyone take into account is this; even if the Fireflies successfully made a vaccine, then what? To quote Joel "people will either think you're crazy or they'll try to kill you." Sure, the Fireflies would be immune, but they can die due to the infected without being infected. How long before they're torn apart by packs of clickers? There's not enough of them to make a real difference. At the stage the world is in, Joel's quote applies; people would think you were insane if you said you had a vaccine. They'd think it was a trap, or something else. But nobody would believe them regarding the existence of a vaccine. Then, there's the issue of distribution. The government has collapsed, so that's not an option. The Fireflies are wanted criminals, so they can't go to the Quarantine Zones to give the vaccine there, and the hunters would just kill them the second they showed up. The only place I can think of where they could spread the vaccine to is Tommy's Dam, and that's because Tommy knows about Ellie's immunity. But once again, not enough people to make a difference. As such, a vaccine is ultimately pointless.

Anyway, I digress. The point is, the vaccine isn't the point. As has been said before, the game isn't about a vaccine; it's about Joel and Ellie's story. Had the narrative changed from what it was, it no longer would have been true to the character, and would have weakened the ending. Still, though, you have to question how things would have turned out if Joel hadn't saved Ellie, and I feel like I know the answer; exactly the same, except the Fireflies would be alive, and both Joel and Ellie would be gone.

What both Marlene AND Joel failed to do, was give Ellie the choice. They took it in their hands to decide what was best for her, instead of asking what she wanted. Marlene says once, if not twice, that making a vaccine is what Ellie would have wanted. But the thing is - it wasn't like Ellie was in a vegetative state; Marlene COULD have asked her when she came to, instead of rushing her off to surgery. It was ultimately Ellie's choice, and they denied her that.

I agree completely. This, as far as I am concerned, is the only point to make about the ending. They were both wrong.

Okay. First off no matter which choice is made whether it be Joel or Marlene's people will become immune. Now if Marlene's choice was enacted (which it isn't because it isn't able to be selected.) then a vaccine would be developed and people would be able to become immune which would lead to the Firefly's being able to more easily defeat FEDRA due to focusing less on the Infection and having less casualties from it. Eventually all the people inside these Quartine Zones would be rescued by the Fireflies which then would have to set up a government which could result in all the people in these QZ zones becoming like the Hunters and fighting against the Fireflies or the Fireflies failing to create an effective government due to limited resources and it becoming like the Wild West on steroids due to all these horrible people who are immoral and unjust surviving. It would become a place full of savage unhuman like people doing things that we could not imagine as possible. If you went with Joel's choice (which happens regardless.) then the Firefly's end up loosing their war probably with FEDRA or focusing their efforts elsewhere. However all the Hunters would die out and the Fireflys would either die out from the war with FEDRA or be integrated into societies like Maria and Tommy's leaving the people in the QZ to revolt against the military and create a new better government along with those not in the QZ as all that are left are those that fought for and want a more civilized and humane future. Also in this scenario Ellie will most likely produce offspring which will inherit her genetic immunity/the mutated fungal disease meaning that eventually everyone in Maria and Tommy's settlement will become immune possibly and over centuries the entire world leaving a better society in the future that is immune to the disease and can start over and build a world like we had before. Overall Joel made the humane choice whether we think it or not. The point is the world was too messed up to just be fixed in a century or few decades like the Firefly's advocated, the world needed to be purged first of all of them which would happen with time and the fact that Joel returns to the civilization that is going to survive and is trying to rebuild by doing things humanely and with moral is what makes him a hero. Anyone can make mistakes and regret them later in life but the fact is that he learned from them and did what he had to so that humanity could truly rebuild and he did it the best he could. I honestly think that Rick Grimes and Joel are trying to achieve the same thing ableit Joel is the opposite of Rick in view and personality but he like Rick learns from his experiences and decides to take the better path. To anyone who thinks that Joel is the anti hero let be just state these few things: Was Gorbachov a hero? Is Lenin a villain? Did the Roman Empire violent removal help or set back Europe? Did the British Empire's more peaceful dismemberment in places like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and India fail or work? And lastly did Hitler actually create the Germany people wanted or the one he did? History has a tendency to repeat itself and the point of learning about it is so we do not make the same mistakes again.

Well I will give my assessment on the vaccine: I honestly have no clue if it would have worked effectively. In theory yes it is a complete possibility that they would be able to make one so you can still say "Joel might have just doomed humanity" so it has a good chance. Its effectiveness though is questionible for technical reasons, namely distribution. Sure there is stuff like getting it to the people but I don't know if the Fireflies have access to large amounts of unused syringes. Reusing those is generally a bad idea (as in possibly making things worse with plague and all that) but beggers can't be choosers I suppose.

But the beggers can't be choosers fact does bring me to one of the more interesting points made in this: how quickly the doctors went from "we got Ellie here!" to "get her to the operating room!". Now I do not consider this a defense of the doctor's actions but you also have to consider the context from a different angle. Namely how long the infection has been going on: 20 years (possibly 21 over the events of the game). Then look at it this way: to make a vaccine you would need someone with medical know how to make it. So you would need someone pre-outbreak to make it. Now Joel is admittidly getting up there in his years. I would peg him at possibly 50 or 51 (given the 20 year outbreak, Sarah's age when she died, and the fact Joel said he had her young). So he is getting older. Same goes for everyone born before the outbreak. Now my point is that you need someone who was a doctor, surgeon, or was in medical school (if you are truly desperate) at the time of the outbreak to make this vaccine. Someone with the knowledge would be around Joel's age but could be even older. So combine pre-outbreak people growing old with raiders, infected attacks, military attacks (in the case of the Fireflies) and the fact that the amount of quality medicine will only go down there will probably not be many pre-outbreak people alive in the next 20 years (as in 40 years after the outbreak). So they are pressed for time to get this done. They would probably feel like that they can't wait another 5 years for a cure to be made, they need to make it now while the people who can are still alive. So given how they think Ellie will provide a "miracle cure" they would obviously rush it to make sure they get it done before they die. Plus you have to look at it that the head surgeon (the one Joel has to kill) is probably around Joel's age (possibly older) because of the amount of time one needs to complete medical school combined with the 20 years since. So obviously he may not have too many years left. So you could say that they feel though they are running out of time so they grow desperate and decide to rush things. Though that has a good chance of ruining any hope they have of making a cure. Again it doesn't justify their actions but it is my perspective why they are doing this.

Also as a final note they may not be that many pre-outbreak doctors or surgeons left because, before they started attacking people, the infected were taken to the hospitals to be treated. So I imagine mortality rates for the doctors, nurses, and surgeons were fairly high so there is a lack of supply in that case.